


To Play the Fool

by SherlockHolmesSkittle



Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan), Batman - All Media Types, Dark Knight (2008), Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Genre: Action, Adventure, Complete, F/M, Gen, Humor, Long, Romance, Vigilante
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-25
Updated: 2015-09-05
Packaged: 2018-07-12 02:31:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 52
Words: 204,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7081141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SherlockHolmesSkittle/pseuds/SherlockHolmesSkittle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some people are only pretending to be idiots. A slew of new villains happens to coincide with the arrival of a new vigilante named Tex. She seems to be connected to Mr. Wayne's newest secretary, Jenny Harkness, an arrogant woman with a brilliant mind to back it up. With a tendency to involve themselves in trouble, it's a good thing Batman's always there to watch out.</p><p>Originally published on my Fanfiction.net account.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

"Jenny, your sister's missing."

I dropped my chemistry homework on the floor and collapsed into my chair. Mom was near hysteria. "What happened? Where did she go? Did someone see something?"

"We don't know. She just vanished. The school says she was there for all her classes, and a bus driver remembers seeing her get off the bus, but after that ... Jackie's just gone. No one saw anything."

"She didn't leave a note or anything?"

"Jackie didn't run away. Something terrible has happened to her. I can't get this feeling of dread out of my stomach."

Mom's gut rarely lied to her. As much as I was inclined to disbelieve it, I had to admit that we'd been saved on more than one occasion by Mom's intuition. "Have you called the police?"

"Of course we did. They're trying to find her, but they haven't turned up a thing."

"They'll find something. People always leave evidence of their presence behind."

"Right. They'll find her. It's just ... I'm not sure they'll find her soon enough."

"Look, Mom, I'm going to come home tonight."

"It's past midnight!"

"Well it's not like I'll be getting any sleep tonight. I'm catching the first flight home. I'll call you when I get back to New York. Love you."

I hung up and took a deep breath. I would have expected something like this in Gotham City, where girls go missing left and right. Not so in Syracuse. If anything, I was the one that should have gone missing by now.

I started throwing a few things into a backpack, just the stuff I didn't want my roommate to steal and everything essential for getting onto an airplane. Within three minutes, I was ready to leave everything behind.

* * *

"Jenny, you need to go to bed," said Dad groggily.

I myself was absolutely wired, and not from caffeine. I had a map pinned to the wall in Jackie's room, a laptop open on the local sex offenders list, and a white board with a rudimentary time line propped against the bed. "Can't. Jackie's not home yet."

"If you go to sleep, you'll be able to think better." He's tried this tactic on me before, and it doesn't work.

"I'm thinking just fine. You can go to bed, though."

He sighed and took a look at my map. "Have you been hacking the FBI Database again?" he asked.

"You need to use something other than Mom's favorite plays as your passwords. I've also put together a list of our possible enemies." I handed him a legal pad with a short list on it. "Those are mine," I turned the page over to reveal three full columns of names, "and these are yours. I decided that Jackie doesn't have any."

"You keep an updated list?" He noticed that I had used a few different pens over some time.

"You don't?" I continued with my map. "I think something happened in the neighborhood. Most everyone would have been at work or taking a nap at the time. We should be looking in backyards in case she cut through them."

"The police won't have warrants for that."

"Then ask around. Someone has to have seen something. All the witnesses we have are from school or the bus drivers. For at least an hour a day until Mom gets home, Jackie is all on her own. How would someone know about and use that time to their advantage?"

"You think someone kidnapped her?"

"I'm trying to entertain all possibilities, Dad, but this one seems more likely. She wouldn't have run away. There aren't any serial killers or rapists nearby. She's not staying the night with a friend. And the lack of evidence of any foul play right now is just making me think she ceased to exist altogether. I need to retrace Jackie's route home for myself." I started looking for a good Teenage Hoodlum disguise in Jackie's clothes.

"If you get caught, I'm not bailing you out," he warned.

"I'm finding Jackie," I snapped. "End of story."

* * *

Day Fourteen. Two weeks, and not a word. Not a scrap of clothing or stray hair to tell us what happened. We knew that she had not run away, but the evidence, or lack thereof, had convinced the police that she had. They moved on to bigger cases, and the media followed. We couldn't sit still because Jackie was still gone, and Mom just felt worse and worse.

At six that evening, someone knocked on the door. Eager for _some_ sort of message of hope, Dad and I abandoned watching the news to answer the door. We tore it open, half hoping we'd find a policeman with his hat in his hands and a solemn expression on his face. We just needed to know _something_.

And there she was. Red hair braided over her left shoulder, Doctor Who t-shirt, boots 'n' jeans with a heavy backpack slung over her shoulder. Looking just like she would have any other day of the week apart from

"I'm sorry I'm late. I got lost on my way home from school," she said.

Before I knew what was coming out of my mouth, I said, "For two weeks?"

Mom pushed past the two of us and then just froze in place with her mouth wide open. Then, crying, she pulled Jackie inside the house and hugged her like if she let go, she'd lose Jackie again.

Dad didn't know what to make of all this. After working on hundreds of missing persons cases, he'd never seen one end like this. When Mom finally let go of her, Dad took Jackie by her shoulders, looking her in the eye to make sure the girl in front of him was really her. He decided she was, and enveloped her in a hug. "Where have you been?" he demanded.

"I don't know."

"How can you not know?" I exclaimed.

"I just don't," Jackie said simply, her voice muffled by Dad's shoulder. "I wish I could tell you, but I can't."

"I thought you were dead."

"Not yet." She smiled like she was joking, but her eyes weren't. There was something she wasn't telling us. There was a lot of stuff she wasn't telling us. So many questions were filling my head all about her. My little sister had turned into a mystery, an enigma, with a distinct air of authority. She straightened up to look at me, and she towered over me without actually being taller.

She noticed my confused stare. "What happened to you, Jackie?" I said.

Then she wrapped me in a hug and my questions and the mysteries didn't matter anymore. Jackie came home, and she still needed me to be a big sister.

* * *

"What is this?" I demanded.

Jackie's head popped out of the closet with her arms full of clothes. "A bedroom?"

I pointed to the half-full suitcase on her bed. The big kind, not the overnight kind. "What do you think you're doing? You can't just leave."

"Jenny, how do I put this?" She dropped her pile of clothes in the suitcase. "I don't want to go, but I have to leave. People are counting on me."

"We're counting on you! We need you!"

"No, you don't. You want to keep me close because you're scared of losing me."

"It's a valid concern. You disappeared for two weeks without a word, and you act like it didn't matter. Do you have any idea how horrible that was for us?"

"Better two weeks than four years." She turned away from me to go through some things in her dresser.

"I cannot believe you. You don't care about any of us, and now you're just going to abandon Mom and Dad. This is going to tear them apart."

"It's my choice this time," she snapped. Her hands clenched in painful memory. "My choice. Believe me, I've lost a lot of sleep thinking about this. How heartless do you think I am?"

"Incredibly. And I think you're selfish, self-centered, egotistical–"

"That was rhetorical," she grumbled.

"You can't pretend that everything's gone back to normal after two months and just go traipsing off to Europe."

She slammed a drawer shut. "No, things aren't normal anymore, Jenny. Our dynamic has been altered and I can't fix it. There are so many things that I can fix, but I can't fix us." Jackie turned around with a stony expression. "I hate to be so vague, but there are lots of things out there that are a lot bigger than you and Mom and Dad. Earthquakes, murders, assassinations, explosions, tsunamis, volcanoes, riots, wars, big things that I can't sum up in one word, and I am capable of helping people and saving lives now."

"You don't have superpowers, Jackie. You disappeared for a couple of weeks and came back with some new tricks. You're not special, you're not psychic, you're not smart, you're not talented, you're not helpful! You are going to get yourself killed!" I shrieked.

She didn't react to anything I threw at her. Nothing. She took a deep breath and replied calmly, "I'm sorry I didn't consult you or ask for your sage advice. I'm leaving for Egypt today. I'll write you and I'll have my cell phone so you can call if you want to yell at me some more."

That snapped the last string holding me together. With what little strength I had, I grabbed the handle of Jackie's suitcase and flung it off the side of the bed, spilling the contents everywhere. Jackie started picking it up, not surprised at all and without an ounce of hurt or anger in her at all.

That night, I left for Gotham once more.


	2. Chapter One

Mrs. Yvonne Miller sat behind her great mahogany desk, flipping through a small set of papers in a folder. I sat in front of her, careful to keep my face cheerful, yet professional. She went through my qualifications quickly, definitely having interviewed for this position several times before. She was looking for something specific, though I could not say what exactly. Her ring finger had an indentation where a ring should have been; she was most likely married for quite a while and only recently divorced. I could tell from her hands that she had been an administrative assistant for years, kept up a professional front, but had a streak of rebellion by painting her nails in sparkling gold. She wore sensible shoes, and her socks were probably patterned to match the season, not her suit. She had a diamond pin of some sort on her lapel, meaning she had given several years to Wayne Enterprises and was proud of it. From her demeanor, she wasn't just head of this office, but she was given a special freedom because she could run the place so well.

"Jenny Harkness," she read aloud from my résumé. "Why does that name sound so familiar?"

"Probably because of my sister," I replied. "It's not a big deal."

"Oh? What did she do?" She squinted at the paper in confusion, trying to remember why Harkness was so significant.

"Nothing really. She just didn't exist for two weeks."

"Oh! You're Jacqueline's sister," she said like she knew her personally.

The truth was annoying sometimes. Over three years had passed since those horrible two weeks, and hardly anyone who met me could avoid bringing it up. They always had the same questions too. I bit my tongue and made sure my smile was still in place.

"Has she gotten her memory back yet?" she asked. Ah, yes. The doctors diagnosed her with some sort of temporary amnesia that hadn't worn off yet. It probably should have by now.

"She hasn't said a word about it. As far as I know, she hasn't."

"It must have been a terrible time for your family. How did you handle it?" It was always the same question, but re-phrased each time.

"How any one handles a crisis, I think. I had to go at it head-on. I helped comb the neighborhood for clues. I went door-to-door asking our neighbors for tips. But mostly, I had to sit and wait it out."

"What was it like when she walked through your front door? It must have been a miracle to see her."

That's the part that most people had trouble with. The police usually found missing people. Our missing person came straight home. Truth be told, right at that moment, I was so mad at her, I could have skinned her alive. However, I needed to be professional for right now, so I told her what she wanted to hear. "It was a huge relief to know that she was alive and well. It was actually Mom that needed the medical attention. She fainted as soon as she saw Jackie."

"And how is your sister doing now?"

I'd have to stop this line of questioning in its tracks. I was here for a job interview, not a feature story for the Gotham Chronicle. "Well, as soon as she came home, she went right back to school, graduated, and announced she was going to travel the world. Last I heard, she was in Egypt. As far as my family is concerned, the whole incident is a closed chapter in our lives that we'd much rather not re-read."

"Of course. I'm sorry, I don't mean to pry. Now, I want to know why you want to work at Wayne Enterprises."

"Well, I like the corporate atmosphere and keeping everything in order. I like the direction Wayne Enterprises is going in, especially in the technology you're developing. I was recently let go from a smaller company, Litetech, which went under. We were one of companies Wayne Enterprises bought supplies from, and I was referred here."

"Yes, I see. They gave you quite the glowing review," she said, lifting up one of the papers in her folder. Rightly so. I was probably one of the only people keeping that company alive. I'm still not sure why I stayed for so long. Oh, right. I had to pay for school.

Jackie's disappearance had thrown a spanner into my plans. I was all set to graduate a year ago, but since I had to drop out right in the middle of the semester, I lost my scholarship and my schedule was set back. I had to work full time so I could go to school in the evenings. Just one more semester, and I would have my degree in Chemistry from Gotham City College. Go GCC Vigilantes.

"Now, you're still in school, correct? Will working here interfere with your class schedule?"

"No. I'm taking a couple evening classes and an online class, and I'm careful to keep school from interfering with work."

"Good, but don't drop out on account of us. We want to support your education too."

"I'll be graduating after this semester. Then I'm all yours, so there's nothing to worry about."

"You may know that we have let four assistants go in the last year and a half. Working under Mr. Wayne isn't going to be like it was in Litetech. What makes you think you have what it takes to last longer than six months?"

"I'm not afraid of a challenge. I was at the head of three separate searches for my sister at a time when I just wanted to throw my hands in the air and scream for all I was worth. After that, I knew that there wasn't anything I couldn't handle." Alright, I'm not above using Jackie's disappearance to score pity points. I needed this job. Besides, it was true.

"The other girls thought that too, but they found that Mr. Wayne was a bit more persistent than they first thought."

"How do you mean?" In hindsight, this was probably a ridiculous question. Everyone who lived in Gotham for a few weeks got to know Bruce Wayne's eccentricities. Either he kept asking them out and they kept turning him down, or it was the other way around. Judging by the turnover rate and the fact I hadn't heard otherwise, I would say it was the latter option.

"It doesn't matter. Well, Ms. Harkness, it was good to meet you," she said, standing up and extending her hand. I did likewise. "We'll give you a call in a few days to let you know if you've got the job."

"Thank you, Mrs. Miller. I look forward to hearing from you, and I would really enjoy working for Wayne Enterprises." And on that note, the interview was concluded.

I walked out of the office feeling very confident. One of the interns passed me and wished me luck with my job hunt. The others in the office ignored me as I made my way out of Wayne Enterprises, especially the girls. I was just another interviewee that probably wouldn't be coming back. Also, I think the fact that I happen to be blonde had something to do with their doubts of my intelligence. I managed to sneak a glance towards the empty desk that sat outside Mr. Wayne's office. It was well lit by the windows behind it. The entire city lay stretched behind whoever sat at that desk, giving them a sense of power. The desk itself was distinctly lacking in anyone's personal touches and had a stack of mail sitting in the middle. Even while Mr. Wayne was missing an administrative assistant, the work didn't stop.

I liked how I could feel a buzz of energy emanating from everything in the building. There was a sense of urgency in everything. That feel of being on the edge of tomorrow's technology was a part of every aspect of its development, even the paperwork.

I managed to get an elevator going down before the lunch crowd left. Even still, it was packed. I made small talk with the people that would make eye contact with me, but most of them got off on a floor well before mine.

The ground floor was possibly more impressive than the highest offices of Wayne Tower. The lobby had a glass front and the ceiling stretched up seven floors high. There were exposed hallways, like an entire section of the building had been cut away so visitors could see the inner workings of Wayne Enterprises. In the lobby, there was a small reflecting pond so full of pennies and nickels that it had gone from obsidian to a dull copper glint. It was all very welcoming.

Whatever the outcome of my interview, I felt very lucky to have seen Wayne Tower as close as I had today.

* * *

Three days later, Mrs. Miller called, letting me know that Wayne Enterprises had decided to hire me and I would be starting on Monday.

"Got the job," I announced to my friend Imogen Watson as I pocketed my phone. "I start next week."

"Really? That's great!" she said, pulling my hair back so she could work with it. "But I thought they were looking for someone with experience."

"I do have experience."

"Not that kind," she said with a knowing smirk.

Imogen started combing through my hair so she could style it. I've had a little agreement with her since we met at Gotham City College five years ago as freshmen. I allow her to do whatever she wants to my hair, and I get to pump her for any information she gleans from her clients. This may seem like a one-sided deal, but keep in mind that I hate letting people touch my hair – even people I know especially well. But Imogen works at a spa that all the wealthy men and women of Gotham visit from time to time. She is privy to all the dirt that even the tabloids can't dig up, so I let her play with my hair, style it, cut it, and practice on it whenever she feels like.

You may be asking why I need all this dirt on Gotham's elite. It's for no specific nefarious purpose. I just like knowing that if any of them tried to overtake Gotham City, then I would have some information to put them back in their place. They're powerful enough already. Plus, it gives me a false sense of control that I thoroughly enjoy having.

"I wish I could have hair like yours," Imogen sighed. Again. That was another reason Imogen was fine with doing my hair for free. She was jealous. She was born with thin, dishwater-colored hair that refused to grow longer than her shoulders. Despite all appearances to the contrary, Imogen was an excellent hair stylist. She just couldn't use her skills on herself.

Imogen was also the reason I didn't chop off my long, golden blonde hair as soon as I got to college. We shared an apartment my freshman year and she forbade me to let any scissors go near my head, so long as they were hers. I don't know why we hit it off. I couldn't care less about hairstyles, and she worked in a hair salon to pay for her business degree. She wasn't exactly quick or clever, but she was headstrong and knew how to keep people and inventory in line. Right after graduating, she was running the Spa de Soleil on her own. It's a place that appeals to both business-men and socialites, the ruling classes of Gotham.

"Any requests?" she asked about my hair.

"What do you have on Bruce Wayne?"

She was confused. "That's an easy one. I don't think there's anything I can tell you that you don't know. He doesn't visit Soleil, so I don't have anything straight from his mouth."

"I can use rumors."

Imogen decided to give me loose curls in celebration of my gainful employment. "Mrs. Clark told me that Bruce bought a national park last month so he could build an amusement park, but since she couldn't name which park it was, I think that it was probably something smaller."

I shook my head, which was difficult with Imogen having a solid hold on my hair. "It was a nature preserve just outside of Gotham. I probably should have mentioned that I thought it was a nice charitable gesture of Mr. Wayne's to Mrs. Miller."

"You've already got the job, remember? You don't need to keep sucking up."

"It's true, though. I found it buried in the second section of the Gotham Chronicle, and even then I had to do some digging to find out it was Bruce Wayne that personally sponsored it."

"Why do you need me to tell you this if you already know?"

"Because I need the underhanded stuff. The things that aren't going to make it to the papers as easily."

"Hm … Laura Walker may have mentioned a few things about him, but she was texting the entire time I was trying to do her hair, so I'm not sure what version of the story I got. I know they were going out for a week or two, which gave little Hotshot enough fame to inflate her ego even more than it should have. She said he was cheating on her with some other girl, which means that she doesn't want to admit that they broke up several months ago."

"What _does_ Laura Walker do?" I couldn't help but wonder.

"I think she's dabbled in modeling, but mostly, she's famous for being famous. And the fact that her parents are old money might have something to do with it."

"Huh. Well, I thought Bruce might have a girlfriend. I managed to spot a bouquet of daisies in his office that he was meaning to give away, and I might have smelled a touch of perfume that didn't belong to any of the girls at Wayne Enterprises."

"How do you know that?"

"Well, half of them wouldn't wear perfume of any kind, and the rest wouldn't have any reason to step foot in his office long enough to leave the scent around."

"Any clues telling you _who_ she is?"

"No, but I expect I'll find out. You're not thinking that there could possibly be any romantic interest between Mr. Wayne and I, are you?"

"Well, you never know. And he is kind of Gotham's Playboy."

"It's a _job_ , Imogen. Nothing more to it."

She sighed and got her curlers. "Whatever you say, Jenny."


	3. Chapter Two

A shipment of unnamed cargo was going to arrive at any minute. The docks felt empty, but Batman knew where to look. A Red Triangle look-out here, a Red Triangle hit-man there. When it came down to it, the docks were awfully crowded for a Tuesday night. The various mob men and women were keeping an eye on their watches. Someone or something was late.

Thankfully, he knew these docks well. The first time the Batman made an appearance, he intercepted a shipment of drugs and delivered mob boss Carmine Falcone to the Gotham City Police Department. Unfortunately, half the shipment slipped by him, and was dumped into the city's water supply by the Scarecrow's men. That was right before the League of Shadows unleashed a night of neurotoxin-induced terror on the Narrows.

Not that he didn't enjoy reminiscing about the events that made mobs terrified to operate in Gotham, but he had to concentrate. The Red Triangle mob was something different. The other mobs had been around before the Batman came to Gotham. They were used to operating without the police or a masked vigilante trying to stop them. Once Batman started hitting them where it hurt, they didn't know how to react. Meeting in daylight hadn't helped their organizations survive, and they eventually died out.

The Red Triangle had been born after the other mobs collapsed. They didn't have the same fears or weaknesses the Falcone family had. They certainly didn't fear the Batman. Nothing he did could stem the flow of drugs, money, human trafficking, and weapons they brought in to Gotham. Years ago, the mobs were terrified of him. Now, they laughed at his futile efforts.

A stir ran through the Red Triangle, and they didn't try to stay hidden anymore. They were much more alert and got their weapons ready for anything. A ship was coming into harbor, possibly with their illicit cargo on board.

Batman crept through the shadows and the towering shipping containers. One man had decided to take a quick smoke break, seeing as how everything had been quiet until now. A quick jab to his throat to paralyze his vocal chords, another blow to his head to knock him out, and the man went down quietly. Batman only paused long enough to kick away his gun and steal his radio.

A second man wasn't paying much attention to his surroundings, but he kept his hand on the gun at his side. He would be more likely to make noise when he went down.

"North Watch to Beacon 2," a woman's voice came over the man's radio, barely audible to the Batman's ears. "Check in, please." He jumped and scrambled to answer it.

"Beacon 2. All quiet on the eastern front," he replied. "Not a bat in sight."

"He won't be in sight, Beacon 2. Keep both eyes open. Penguin will be arriving momentarily."

"Will do, North Watch." And the man went back to his surveillance, this time a bit more aware of the state of the docks.

No matter. No one would notice his absence for another fifteen minutes or so. He was out cold with barely a gasp of protest. As an extra precaution, Batman unloaded and disassembled his pistol before moving on to the main force.

By the time the boat docked, at least five outliers had been taken care of. About eight other men and women remained to unload the shipment. It may have been odd to have women overseeing a shipment of illicit goods, but the Red Triangle was a surprisingly equal-opportunity criminal employer. They were just as capable and cruel as any of the men that worked under the elusive Penguin. Batman had learned this the hard way.

Penguin, of course, was a code name for the man that ran the entire mob. From what Batman could uncover, the name Penguin was a nick-name he earned when he was younger, and was not indicative of his appearance in any way. However, he did have a fondness for wearing tuxedos and top hats, which might explain where he got the name in the first place. This was as far as his information went. The Red Triangle kept their lips sealed about the personal life of the Penguin, as if they knew that someone could be listening to them at any time. That, or Penguin was an extremely private mob boss.

"Let's get this done quickly," North Watch said over the radio. "Penguin will be here shortly and he doesn't like to be kept waiting."

"We know, Addison," one of the more burly men grumbled. To his shorter and lankier companion, he said, "It's like she thinks this is our first run or something."

"Well that's probably because we keep running into the same problem. Batman," he replied, tightening his grip on his rifle. The two exchanged a fleeting look of grit and tenacity.

The burly man swallowed and clutched his gun closer. "At least after tonight he won't be a problem anymore."

"What makes you say that?"

Before either man could properly react to the Batman growling over their heads, the vigilante swung a vicious right hook in the bigger man's jaw, punched his ribs with the other fist, jabbed his friend in the solar plexus with his gun, and knocked out the shorter man with a backhanded punch. They went down and stayed down for good. Unfortunately, someone else heard the scuffle.

"Beacon 9, check in," said North Watch. "Beacon 9? Somebody check on him," she ordered. She was getting angrier by the minute. This wouldn't be the first shipment she's supervised that was intercepted by the Batman.

Rather than hurry to the boat, Batman waited in the shadows for the majority of the players to congregate on the scene. There were six in all, four men and two women, dressed in dark clothing, ranging from dirty jeans and dark t-shirts to pressed slacks and leather jackets. Every one of them carried a menacing gun far too large to conceal.

A woman with short, blue hair wearing army fatigues found the men lying on the ground behind a forklift. "He's here," she announced.

Then everything went dark. A well aimed batarang knocked out each overhead light in a show of sparks. For a moment, the group was confused, but they came prepared for such a tactic. Each of them pulled out a torch and went on the offensive. Six beams of light scanned the shipping containers and shadows erratically, looking for suspicious masses of black cloth and armor.

There was no way to hide from the flashlights, and the Batman was occasionally hit by a beam. But as soon as someone thought they saw him, he was gone. Right up until one light suddenly vanished. The flashlight was crushed under someone's boot, and the owner suffered a broken nose and a concussion from the heel of Batman's hand.

One of the men panicked and swept the dockyard with a spray of bullets. Two others were quick to follow suit, amidst shouts of, "Watch it! You're going to get one of us killed!" and, "Where is he! I see him!"

A couple bullets glanced off the Batman's armored chest-plate, but for the most part, he was able to predict the path of the shots and avoid them altogether. He had hoped to avoid this part, since more people got hurt when guns were placed in the hands of scared fools, but what could be done at this point?

Batman grabbed the next closest gun, slammed it into the owner's jaw, and threw said owner into a shipping container. That flashlight fell to the ground, and the beam went still. Without missing a beat, he kicked another gunman into his neighbor, and both hit the ground.

"We're going to need some help over here!" the other woman shouted into her radio. "He's got -" and she was knocked out as well.

One of the men found himself face-to-face with the Batman and tried to swing a punch, but the Dark Knight blocked it, twisted his wrist until it snapped, and threw him into the wall.

All the flashlights and fallen and lay still on the ground. He braced himself for anyone else that was foolish enough to attack him in the dark, but no one seemed willing or able to face him. No one conscious, anyway. He allowed himself a smirk before moving on to the boat and intercepting the shipment.

Three able bodied men had managed to move one large box onto the deck and were working on a second. Batman knocked out the lights with a batarang and they took defensive positions.

"Get Grundy off the boat," one of them ordered. "We'll keep him busy."

Batman swooped down, his cape outstretched and throwing the shadow of a giant bat over the three of them, and tackled the foremost man. This one, however, had been through some training and had gone toe-to-toe with the Dark Knight a couple times before. He kicked the Bat off him and jumped up. Batman landed on his feet and braced himself for the coming attack.

The man didn't hesitate to engage him with a showy roundhouse kick to the teeth. The Batman blocked him easily and knocked him off balance. He managed to keep his footing and return with a punch or two of his own. Batman caught his fist and threw him onto his back. Before he could recover, he was clouted over the head and knocked out cold.

Now for the other two, who seemed to have disappeared. They were busy carrying the last crate off the boat. Batman started off to intercept them when he felt a tap on his shoulder. He spun around and was met by a massive fist the size of his head. Batman staggered backward and barely managed to dodge the next two blows. The third one hit him in the chest and sent him sprawling into a pile of wooden pallets.

He was stunned for a second, but that was long enough to gather all the details of his attacker he needed. He did not overestimate the size of his fists. The man was a giant, easily a foot and a half or two feet taller than Batman, with a touch of macrocephaly and bone white skin stretched over his frame. He wore a long, black woolen coat that was tattered at the edges, worn-out jeans, heavy black combat boots with steel showing through one of the toes, and a dirty white button-up shirt. His eyes were yellowed and bloodshot, but full of a need to fight. And fight he could. The man had the muscles of a body-builder on steroids, and he knew how to use them to his full advantage.

"Batman," he said with a slight Boston accent. His voice was deep, but scratched, and he spoke softly like his vocal chords had been injured. He cracked his knuckles, preparing for another round. "They call me Solomon Grundy. I was born on a Monday."

He raised his fists like a single hammer and let them fall full force right on Batman's diaphragm. Or he would have, had Batman not rolled out of the way just in time. Instead, the stack of pallets exploded upwards in a shower of splinters

Batman managed to get to his feet and immediately attacked back. A sizeable portion of a man's strength in a battle comes from his ability to intimidate his opponent. That was why the Batman mantle worked so well in defeating other criminals. However, with Grundy, punching him was akin to hitting a brick wall that looked down on him condescendingly and laughed at his pitiful efforts. There was no need for bravado in his case. Grundy's strength was raw and untempered. He swept his arm at the Batman and sent him somersaulting into a wall.

Grundy shrugged off his coat, throwing it aside carelessly, and stretched out his pale, sallow arms like he was simply getting ready for a workout. He stalked towards the pile of Bat, pausing to casually pick up a discarded long, iron bar. He stopped just in front of him. "How is anyone supposed to be afraid of you? I don't get it." He raised his iron bar in the air.

And was stopped by the appearance of a figure standing between the two much larger men. It was so slight that both Batman and Grundy doubted it would be much of a deterrent. The figure was hidden in his shadow, so Batman couldn't get a very good look at it, but he could tell the stranger was half his size, let alone Grundy's. There was no way it could stand up to anyone.

"Get out of here," Batman ordered, barely able to get his breath out.

"What he said," Grundy replied. Then he resumed his attack with a war cry, but the figure held its ground. He bar came down directly toward its head.

The figure's hands flashed out and caught it just before it came two inches from a guaranteed killing blow. One hand yanked the bar out of his grasp while the other smashed in his nose. He stopped for a moment to check the stream of blood spreading over his face and onto his filthy shirt, giving the newcomer enough time to dance out of his reach.

By the time he reacted to his injury, the figure had circled behind him and was provoking him by swinging the bar at him. Grundy roared in animalistic fury and went after it, swinging his fists and clawing at the air that the figure had just barely occupied the second before. The figure was so close to the ground that throwing those punches nearly toppled him over. " _Missed me,_ " it taunted in a deep, mechanically scrambled voice.

Even if the figure was doing nothing but retreating, it was still distracting Grundy from Batman's recovery. He pushed himself to his feet and tried to recover his senses. Grundy's blows took a lot more out of him than he expected. At this point, brute force wasn't an option, so he decided to go with something a bit more low key.

The stranger retreated nearly to the end of the dock and was running out of room to dodge Solomon Grundy's fury. The figure swung the iron bar to deflect his blows, but didn't have enough strength to do much more than annoy him further. Batman gathered what strength he had and took off after the monstrosity. The figure used the bar to pole vault and kick Grundy in the chin, sending him two steps backwards, which was just enough. Batman leaped onto his back, snaked his arms around his neck, and held on as tightly as possible.

Suddenly, the newcomer didn't matter to Grundy anymore. He tried prying the Batman's arms off, but his beefy fingers couldn't get a good enough grasp and those arms had an iron strength of their own. So he opted for the next best method of getting his windpipe back. He stumbled backwards until they hit a metal shipping container. The Batman let out an, "Oof!" Grundy had nothing to say because the pressure did not let up on his throat.

He rammed into the next available wall. This blow jarred several of his ribs, but his grip did not let up. If anything, his determination made him squeeze harder. Grundy gave it another go, but with the same results. Both of them were starting to see spots.

Then Grundy felt something tangle in his feet. That idiot was back and trying to trip him. With one solid kick, he sent the figure sliding off the edge of the dock and into the water. With that distraction gone, he could deal with the fact that his legs were starting to feel wobbly without help from an iron bar.

Someone blew the horn of a pretentiously expensive car, distracting the two wrestlers. Grundy took this opportunity to bend forward, throwing the Batman over his back onto the deck. He landed on his back with an audible _crack!_ Without wasting a second, Grundy grabbed the vigilante by his shoulders and threw him over the edge to join their surprise visitor. Then he ran off in the direction of the car horn.

Batman scrambled to find his grappling gun before he hit the water, when his descent was halted by a sharp tug on his neck. His cape had snagged something and he swung gently in the breeze as he listened to the car drive off into the distance.

 _Failed._ They'd gotten away with the shipment.

He looked up to see what his cape had snagged and was slightly surprised to see that it was a small hand. Higher up, he saw the figure, now better lit, holding onto one of the supports of the dock with the other hand. The first thing he saw after the hand was the metal head with glowing red eyes. The light glinted off of the ribbons of metal that shaped the head. There seemed to be room for features like a nose, a mouth, and ears, but they were smoothed over and only the bright, square eyes were accented.

" _Any ideas?_ " the figure said, its jaw not moving. At this point he still couldn't tell if it was male or female. " _Not that this … hurts … or anything. Take your time._ "

Batman found his grappling gun, shot it at the nearest crane, and pulled both of them back onto the deck. The only sounds left were a few nearby gulls and their feet hitting the wood. Well, his landing quietly and the newcomer stumbling and literally hitting the deck. The Red Triangle was gone with their shipment and newest weapon, Solomon Grundy.

He turned to the figure who had gotten up and stood at its full height – a full head shorter than Batman. He also noticed –

"You're a girl."

She brushed some dust off the knees of her black pants. " _Yes. Is that a problem?_ "

He ignored the question. "What are you doing here?"

" _I g_ _ot bored. Came to help you out._ "

He costume said this was more of a habit than a whim. She wore black leather-like pants tucked into sensible black boots, and a leather jacket that was black at the neck and shoulders and faded to blood red at her waist and the elbows of her sleeves. The jacket's high neck connected with the metal mask with glowing eyes. The entire ensemble had seen quite a bit of use. It was stained with some dirt, but was not worn out. "Who are you?" he demanded.

" _I'm Tex_ ," she said. " _I have to run, but I'll see you around, Batman._ "


	4. Chapter Three

My first day at Wayne Enterprises wasn't bad. My responsibilities were much the same as the last office I worked at – filing, approving payroll, handling Mr. Wayne's correspondence, making and returning calls, arranging meetings and appointments - nothing horrendous. There was just one problem.

I got there a good fifteen minutes early so I could meet my new boss and so we could get to know each other. I didn't see the man until well after noon.

The others in the office didn't look worried. Obviously this happens quite a bit. That piece of knowledge did not make me any less annoyed. This man had no business ethic if he couldn't get here on time. Of course, since he owned the place, he wasn't late. He made his own, "on time." This would also explain why every meeting was scheduled at or after 2 pm. It made me wonder why I was needed here so early. I made sure my face didn't show how annoyed I felt.

When Mr. Wayne did decide to show up at the office, there was a definite stir in the staff. Not one of scrambling to look busy. It was more of a passing of knowing nods and smirks, like an inside joke was going around. Mr. Wayne was late again.

He stopped at my desk to drop off his coat. "Any messages?" he asked, not really looking at me. He was distracted by his own phone.

"Oswald Cobblepot's office called to confirm your meeting at 2:00 today." A look of disgust passed his face briefly, but I went on. "There was also a Ms. Star Hansen who wanted to know if you were in yet."

"I thought I gave her my number."

"She said she lost your card and hasn't had a chance to put it in her phone just yet."

He chuckled a bit and started for his office. I took his coat to hang up, and he stopped in his tracks. "Are you new?" he asked.

"Yes," I replied. "Jenny Harkness."

He shook my hand. "Just seems like you've been here forever."

"Déjà vu. It happens."

"Guess so. Thanks." He turned and went into his office while I finished hanging up his coat.

My anger lifted with that little exchange. He was charming and kind, and that was why he could get away with murder. And he was injured. He moved stiffly like he had bruised his ribs or something. And it hurt his arm to shake my hand. I wanted to ask what had happened to him, but I held my tongue. After all, it was my first day. And if he didn't want to tell me about his injuries, I wouldn't say a word.

2:00 came a lot faster than I thought it would, and once it came around, I wanted to send it back where it came from and demand a refund.

Oswald Cobblepot arrived on our floor at 2:01 pm. I couldn't see him yet, but everyone could hear him shouting, "Where's Bruce's office?" at the closest intern. The poor man meekly pointed towards my desk. I quickly finished up my phone call so I could deal with him.

"Mr. Wayne," I paged into his office. "Mr. Cobblepot is here to see you." I kept my eye on the man in question as he approached.

"Two minutes," Mr. Wayne replied.

I felt like paging back and asking, "Really?" but I deliberately took my hands away so I wouldn't.

Cobblepot approached my desk with the subtlety of an elephant. He wore a genuine evening suit from the Victorian Era, complete with spats, a top hat, and a cane. Seeing how he carried his 69 inches, I would guess that it was genuine. He had a long, hooked nose, black, beady eyes behind round wire glasses, pale skin that seemed to glisten just a bit, a rather stocky build, hands like a walrus' flippers, and thin, brown hair slicked back. He slammed his cane down on my desk, set his top hat down, pulled off his gloves and tossed them into his hat. "I have an appointment with Bruce," he announced.

I almost expected his voice to be nasally and parrot-like, but it was just the opposite. He sounded like and English gentleman, except one that was born in America and had a condescending tone that he just couldn't seem to get rid of. It struck fear in the stomachs of all those who heard it, including mine.

"He'll be just two minutes," I said. The joy had gone out of my soul the moment I realized I would have to deal with him. Now the only thing left was cynicism and sarcasm.

This did not sit well with him at all. "He wants me to – Do you have any idea who I am?"

I had no choice but to answer him honestly. "No."

"No?" He was turning red with seething rage.

"No, I'm new. My last company wasn't nearly big enough to attract the attention of clients as distinguished as yourself."

He was immediately placated. "Oh, I see. I'll just wait here." He took a seat by my desk. "I don't suppose you've heard of the Cobblepot family? It's one of the oldest families in Gotham City."

"No, I'm sort of new to Gotham."

"That's a shame. We were one of the most powerful people in the eastern United States."

"Was that before the Waynes?" I do study history, after all.

His face snapped back into a scowl and he leaped to his feet. This would have been the perfect time for Mr. Wayne to open his office door and invite Mr. Cobblepot inside with a bright and cheerful smile to begin their meeting, saving me from having to deal with him. Unfortunately, this was not to be as Mr. Wayne was still 'busy.'

For one minute and forty-eight seconds, Oswald Cobblepot lectured me and screamed at me how the Wayne family had ruined the Cobblepot dynasty and deserved no honor because they were a bunch of thieves. He listed off his family's accomplishments that I should be grateful for and that I didn't deserve to be a part of. These accomplishments fell into one of two categories: outright lies and taking credit for anything built by anyone, and claiming that someone else stole all the credit. I couldn't help but notice that according to him, the Waynes were the worst offenders, having been given the honors for more than half of whatever he listed.

I patiently stood there and watched his mouth move and his face get redder and redder. I bit my tongue so I wouldn't accidentally blurt out an insult or argue with him. Instead, I gave him a blank, passive stare. Nothing he said could make me react, which made him even angrier.

Finally, as Mr. Cobblepot was insulting my intelligence and existence, Mr. Wayne opened his door, cutting him off. "Mr. Cobblepot!" he said with all the faux kindness he could muster. "Come on in. How are you?"

Cobblepot grumbled an answer and slid into his office. Mr. Wayne gave me an apologetic half-smile and closed the door after him.

The entire office was deathly quiet once he disappeared, and everyone was looking at me. "What?" I said, daring them to ask what had happened. And everyone got back to work, or at least tried to look busy. I sat back down and tried to get something done.

I heard arguing coming from Mr. Wayne's office, but I couldn't make out what they were saying. After a couple minutes, things were getting very heated and I heard something shatter. I wasn't the only one listening in. Several people in the office reacted with gasps. I was tempted to go in and make sure no one was bleeding, but the continued arguing assured me they were fine.

Three minutes after that, Oswald Cobblepot flew out of the office, snatched his hat and cane from off my desk, knocked off several papers in the process, and pushed a line of people away from the elevator. A group of people were expelled from the car before the doors closed and he was gone. I could swear the office was about to burst into applause.

I knelt down to pick up my papers, or at least shovel them into a manageable stack. I was surprised to see Mr. Wayne join me and help me with my mess. "He's a rather unpleasant one," he said.

"Did you know that Wayne Tower would never have been built without significant contributions from the Cobblepots?" I put my pile of papers on my desk.

"Is that so?" I took the papers from him and he gave me a hand to help me to my feet. "What did you think of him?"

"He's a parasite," I said honestly. I went into his office to find what had shattered. It was a white vase that once held a bouquet of roses. I grabbed a trash can and started picking up the pieces. "He feeds on the weak and tries to make strong men think they are beneath him. He comes from a wealthy family, which is where that suit came from. He took it at first because he couldn't afford to purchase one of his own, possibly because his family cut him off. However, since he has recently come into quite a bit of money, he has developed an appreciation for it. Not the history behind it, but because of the power it gave him. He smokes cigars regularly, but not often. They're mostly for looks. He used to be a hard worker, most likely as an administrative assistant or a bank teller. He had a job that required the extended use of a keyboard. He also used to be engaged, but something went wrong. He wore that ring long after she was gone. He also spends quite a bit of time around a large variety of birds, no less than eight. He said goodbye to them before he left today."

"I didn't ask you to guess," he reprimanded.

"I didn't. He had a patched elbow, patched knee, and a few other minor repairs which told me he values the suit now, but those repairs wouldn't have been necessary had the proper care been given in the first place. This means that he didn't care for it at first, possibly because it was so outdated that it looked ridiculous. Then when he came into money, he appreciated its nostalgic charm. It made him unique among his fellow businessmen. The hat was custom made for an L. Cobblepot to go with the suit, which means it was handed down to him. I could see the faint outline of cigars in his breast coat pocket, and I could smell them a bit. However, he didn't smell like cigar smoke and he didn't have any stains on his hands or teeth, which meant that while he always have them on hand, he doesn't smoke them for pleasure. The pads of his fingers were slightly flattened, which usually happens to musicians and typists after long periods of time. They weren't quite as flattened as a musician's, which meant something clerical. There was a slight indentation on his ring finger where a ring should be. He also had a cut by something that bounced off the ring and cut the skin above and below it, leaving a very faint scar. He wore the ring for a long time, but he was never married or she would have made some repairs to that suit herself and there would be more of a trace of her in his life. And I think he keeps the ring in his left pocket."

"And the birds?"

"I counted four different feathers that were stuck to the lining of his hat, two from his right cuff, one from his pocket, and there was an eighth one stuck to his left pant leg. Eight different birds that he touched just before he left today."

Mr. Wayne picked up the bouquet and straightened it out. "You'll have to teach me how to do that."

I chuckled. My sister thinks I'm related to Sherlock Holmes. I think it's more likely I'm related to dr. Joseph Bell. "Observation and deduction. All there is to it."

Mr. Wayne sighed and looked at the bouquet wistfully. "I was going to give these to Star."

"Star? Star Hansen. The girl who lost your number."

"Yes, my girlfriend."

"Ah." Now I had a name to go with a rumor. And a confirmed rumor at that. "How did you meet her?"

"She's an actress."

"Really? Film or Television?"

"Theatre. I met her after seeing "Sunset Boulevard" at Capitol Theatre."

"Who did she play? Betty?"

"She was in the chorus." He smiled, remembering the night. "I went backstage to meet the girl that played Betty, and Star got to me first. I'm glad she did. Betty was a bit of a diva."

I had to chuckle at that. When I talked to Star, she didn't sound like she was a back-up singer. She was confident and in control, which was why I wondered if she was the lead. "She's a smart girl, very funny."

He chuckled. I didn't even know the half of it. "Yeah, but she didn't want our relationship all over the news. So if you don't mind …"

I nodded. "Not a word. I promise. Well, it looks like the flowers survived. I'll see if I can find a new vase."

"No, don't worry about it. Thanks, Jenny." He took a seat at his desk. "I promise it won't always be like today."

"Oh, I know." I closed the door after me as I left.

I returned to my desk and got back to work. Five minutes later, Mrs. Miller stopped by. "How are you holding up?"

"I'm doing fine."

"I'm so sorry about Mr. Cobblepot."

"Don't worry about it. I'm fine."

"What did he break in Mr. Wayne's office? We all heard it."

"Oh, it was a vase."

"He didn't throw it, did he?"

"No, it was just knocked off the desk. No assault charges needed."

"Well I can tell you he'll be banned from this building from now on."

"I can't tell you how happy I am to hear that."

Bruce Wayne let out a long breath intended to calm him down. Sometimes being Batman had its drawbacks. For instance, as long as he wasn't wearing his costume, he couldn't pummel anyone senseless even if they deserved it. For another thing, Batman had led him to people like Oswald Cobblepot.

Some weeks ago, he had managed to catch a glimpse of Penguin and recognized him as Oswald Cobblepot. Unfortunately, without any evidence, the police couldn't do anything to stop him. So Bruce decided to get some dirt on his own. He agreed to the meeting with Mr. Cobblepot in order to find something that could be used against him.

But when it came down to it, Bruce couldn't justify using his company to catch this criminal. What the man was proposing was ludicrously dangerous and more than a little insane. So how had the man managed to build up a successful business in the first place?

This wasn't the only question bothering him, though. What to do about Tex? She wasn't overly concerned about the illicit shipment getting out on the streets, but she fought to save Batman's life. What, if any, motives did she have? And could she be counted on to fight Penguin's gang? He had to find her before she could do any damage.


	5. Chapter Four

In the two weeks since the Red Triangle's shipment arrived, it had passed through several hands and traveled extensively through Gotham. Whoever was in charge of it wanted to make sure that anyone tracking it would lose it within a couple days and that its true location would stay hidden. They were, of course, thinking of the Batman.

As much as the nameless members of Red Triangle overestimated him, they managed to underestimate his tenacity, especially when it came to tracking something he had failed to stop once. In order to finally get rid of the shipment and get Batman off their tail, they arranged a meeting with another street gang to sell their product. That meeting was to take place in an abandoned factory, which wasn't surprising. Ever since the depression struck Gotham, there was a surplus of closed stores, deserted warehouses, and defunct factories. This particular factory used to make engine parts for cars and buses, but the only sign of that left were stacks of rusted scrap metal.

Batman was waiting in the rafters. That position alone was dangerous for several reasons, the first being that he wasn't as well hidden in the shadows as he could have been. As long as no one looked up, he would be fine. The reason he was in that particular spot was because of the second reason. Most of the other rafters weren't in the best condition, and the one he was using didn't exactly look like it could hold his weight. Still it was the safest of all of them. And if his perch didn't suddenly give way, the rest of the building probably could. One side of the building had been attacked by vandals with spray paint and sledgehammers, and that was the most secure wall. Batman swore he could feel the whole place sway.

Right at midnight, a white, windowless van arrived. They came through a gaping hole in the north wall rather than use the doors to their left that would have been wide enough. They stopped towards the center of the biggest open space in the building, but left the engine running. Five men exited the vehicle, each one armed. One had a duffel bag slung over his shoulder, probably filled with money. These were the buyers. If Batman took care of them now, he would lose the Red Triangle, so he waited.

Within two minutes, two other vehicles arrived. One was a bright red pickup with a crate in the bed covered by a tarp. The other was a black SUV with a couple more boxes in the trunk. They stopped facing the van and shut off both their engines. Four people got out of the SUV, two of which went to the pickup to untie the tarp. Three others got out of the pickup to help unload the cargo. The two men that weren't helping approached the buyers to negotiate a price.

The Red Triangle set the largest crate down in between the two groups and pried off the lid. Inside were several rows of sub-machine guns. The first negotiator took one out and showed it to the buyers. Powerful, deadly, and untraceable, these guns would be untraceable and could kill any cop wearing Kevlar. "These babies will give the police a run for their money, easy. You'll be unrivaled in no time."

"How much?" one of the buyers asked.

"$1,000," said the second negotiator.

"For all of them?" he said incredulously.

"Each."

The price was high, but they wouldn't be able to find weapons like these anywhere else. The buyers discussed the price amongst themselves while the rest of the Red Triangle crew unloaded the other boxes from the SUV. While they were arguing, Batman took a few quick pictures to provide evidence for the police should they go to court. Finally, the buyers came to a consensus. "We'll give you $500," one of the men said.

"It's $1000, or nothing."

"$750."

"$1000. And we're even throwing in the ammunition for free." The first negotiator opened up one of the smaller boxes and took out a bullet. "These will go through any body armor, and even break bulletproof glass."

"The last guns you sold us were missing the firing pins. You're just ripping us off again," said one of the other members of the street gang.

"Don't insult our intelligence. They didn't work because you didn't care for them properly. We don't sell any shoddy merchandise. Last chance." The Red Triangle formed a tight semi-circle behind the weapons.

After holding out a moment longer, the head of the buyers ordered the one holding the duffel-bag of cash to hand over the money. "We'll take them all."

"Excellent!" He replaced the gun and had the lid nailed back on as he shook the buyers' hands.

The money exchanged hands, as did the weapons. Batman took a few more incriminating photos, making sure to catch their faces, before he decided that it was time to put this to an end. Then he caught the movement of someone who hadn't been there a moment before. Tex fell out of the air and landed on the crate of weapons with an audible _thump!_ Her eyes flashed and she gave a metallic growl before leaping off the crate directly at the man with the money.

Tex swung the duffel-bag of cash around and knocked over a couple men, then put it over her shoulder so she could fight with her bare hands. If they wanted it back, they would have to get through her.

And she was not one that could be taken down easily. Watching her fight was like watching a dancer in action. Her moves weren't fueled by brute force. They were graceful and fluid, like a choreographed fight. She didn't react to any attacks from the men because she was already prepared to block them.

He wouldn't have taken on a group that big without taking out their strongest men secretly, or at least trying to scare them first. Tex just burst onto the scene and took them all on at once, and as impressive as that sounds, it was also the most likely way to get herself killed. In the interests of keeping her alive, he'd have to intervene. Amateurs. More trouble than they were worth.

He leaped to the ground and rushed to join the fight, but by the time he reached the white van, the only men conscious were one man in a knife fight with Tex, another one taking aim at the back of her head with a handgun, and a third writhing in pain on the ground. The second man fired before he could stop him. Tex's head snapped forward and head-butted the first man, effectively ending the fight. She stumbled for a moment like she was about to keel over, but regained her balance and turned around slowly.

" _Ouch,_ " she growled.

The man's eyes grew wide. He dropped his gun and booked it to the nearest exit. Or he would have if he hadn't been clotheslined by the Batman.

" _What are you doing?_ " she demanded. " _I needed him to talk!_ "

"He's still conscious," he calmly replied, picking him up by his coat lapels.

" _With paralyzed vocal chords._ "

He took another look. The man was struggling to breathe, let alone scream. He was in no condition to talk, and hence, useless. Gordon would still appreciate having him off the streets. He dropped the man and retrieved his handcuffs from his belt. "There's still one who can talk," he said, indicating the conscious man in pain on the ground.

" _But he doesn't know anything. I needed that one. I'll have to wait for him to recover._ "

"So help me get the rest of them into the van." He handcuffed the mute one to the SUV and got to work on the rest.

The two of them worked together to handcuff each man, and then throw them in a pile in the van, although Tex did most of the handcuffing and searching them for weapons, and Batman did most of the - make that all - of the heavy lifting. As soon as all of them were inside, they switched on the childproof locks and slammed the doors. Then they both turned to the crook, Tex's eyes glowing bright red and Batman giving him the glare of a lifetime.

"Now," said Batman. "I have some questions."

The man's eyes dilated and he went deathly pale, but barely a sound came from his mouth. Tex sighed. " _Give him a few more minutes. I can wait._ "

Batman took a threatening stance with his arms crossed and stared the man down until he couldn't bear to look him in the eye any longer. Tex, on the other hand, needed something to keep her busy, so she opened up the crate of guns and took one of them out. After checking that it was unloaded, she held it with both hands, one hand on the muzzle, the other just above the handle, and squeezed. Her fingers seemed to go through the metal like it had been softened, but that was highly unlikely. Not wanting to let his suspect know that he was just as confused at Tex's antics as he was, he turned away from her and resumed his watchful eye on the crook, pretending that he knew exactly what was going on.

Four minutes passed, and Batman was growing tired of waiting. His agitation was apparent and making the suspect even more nervous. Tex had finished whatever she was doing with the guns and joined the Batman in his watch, although she was visibly more relaxed as she casually crossed her arms and chewed on a thumbnail. At four minutes and thirty-two seconds, Batman had had enough, declaring, "I think he's ready."

" _So ask him._ "

"What happened to the rest of the shipment from a week ago?"

The man shrugged, although it was difficult to interpret the movement due to his shaking.

"You're lying. Things get painful for you when you lie."

"I'm not!" he gasped, barely audible. "No one but Penguin knows what happened to it!"

"Where's Penguin?"

"I don't know! He changes our meeting locations on a daily basis."

"Where was the location tonight?"

" _What are you supposed to do with the money?_ " Tex interrupted. She was standing away from the interrogation, avoiding the conflict. She did not want to be involved, but had no choice.

"I wasn't in charge of delivering the money."

That was a lie. He was the only person that touched the duffel bag of money after it had changed hands, which meant he knew what to do with it. Batman picked him up and gave him a solid punch to the jaw. "That's for lying."

"I don't know where I was supposed to take it!" he clarified.

" _Which means you were going to be told as soon as you had it._ "

"Were you going to call it in?" Batman demanded.

"No."

"Someone calls you."

The man buttoned his lips and looked away. Batman got ready to give him another blow, but Tex stopped him. " _He's not lying. He's just not answering._ "

"It's exactly the same."

" _Not quite_." Tex quickly went through his pockets and found his cell phone. " _Now we know to wait for a call._ "

"If you don't know the password, you won't get a thing!"

"So what is it?"

" _Ten bucks says it's Swordfish_ ," she muttered.

"It is! It is Swordfish!"

" _Okay, now you can hurt him._ "

"Wait! You just have to ask if this is the Emperor, and when he says yes, you respond with -"

Just then, the phone in Tex's hand rang. "Better idea," said Batman. "You answer it," he told him.

He took it from Tex, turned on the speakerphone and held it out for the crook to speak. "Reggie, is that you?" said the person on the other end of the line.

"Yeah. Is this the Emperor?"

"Stop messing around. It's the Penguin, you dunce. Do you have the money?"

"Yes, but -"

"Meet us at the bar on 7th and 7th in twenty minutes."

Batman hung up and started for the door. "Lock him up with the others," he ordered.

Tex chased after him, ignoring their suspect. " _You're not leaving me behind that easily._ "

She followed him outside where he recovered his Batpod, cleverly disguised as a pile of garbage. "I don't have time for you to tag along."

Tex ducked behind a nearby dumpster and pulled out her own bike. It was a black and red Ducati straight from Italy. " _The question isn't whether I can keep up with you. It's whether you can keep up with me._ "

Not that he wasn't up for a challenge, but he really didn't like dealing with amateurs, and she was definitely inexperienced. So he took off for the drop point before she could even get her engine started.

In fifteen minutes, he made it to the bar, a nightclub known as Rush that was only frequented by those whose money was made by illegal means. He had gone through the back streets of Gotham and some less than pleasant alley ways to get there and really had managed to make some good time. But in the alley, carefully hidden and watching the nightclub, was Tex sitting on her bike, her head and arms resting on the handlebars. The one thing he hadn't taken into account was Tex's ability to blend in with the general populace. No wonder she had gotten here faster.

" _Took you long enough_ ," she teased when he pulled up just in front of her.

"Had to take the scenic route. What's happened so far?"

" _Nothing. No one's gone in or out. There is a man on the roof across the street with a nice view of the door, but that's the only sign of an ambush I can see._ "

"What makes you think it's an ambush?"

" _The password. He was telling the Penguin he was compromised by the Batman. Are you asking because you don't know or because you're testing me?_ "

"Which do you think?"

" _I'm going to go with the second one because it makes me feel better._ "

"Have you ever been on a stakeout before?"

" _If I say yes, will you promise not to lecture me?_ "

"Stay quiet, stay put, keep your eyes open and do exactly as I say. Got it?"

If she could have rolled her eyes, she probably would have.

In the next five minutes, the two of them watched several people unaffiliated with the Red Triangle go in and out of the back door of the nightclub. A couple were armed, but they didn't look like they were planning on attacking anyone tonight. Finally, at the appointed time, three men left the nightclub. Two of them Batman recognized from the night of the botched shipment interception, one he singled out and disarmed and the other who had held his own for a bit in a one on one fight. The third he recognized for a completely different reason. It was the same man who had been in Bruce Wayne's office for less than ten minutes and managed to insult nearly everyone in the building. Oswald Cobblepot.

The rather rotund man was dressed in his signature Victorian wear, looking out of place in a dive like this. He quickly surveyed the street and the nearby alleys looking for anyone out of place. "I don't see anyone," he said. "Are you sure that they were compromised?"

"Reggie's an idiot," the first man replied, "but he knows which code is which. He was in trouble."

"How the hell did Batman figure out where we were setting up shop?"

"It wasn't Batman. He used the other panic code."

"The police? Or someone new?"

"I don't know."

Penguin lashed out and backhanded him across the face. The man fell backwards, blood spurting out of his mouth. Those fat rings on his fingers weren't meant to be pretty. "I pay you to figure these things out! Useless!"

"He hung up before I could get anything else out of him!"

"Then why did you give him the address so quickly?" Penguin resumed his attack, growing more and more violent in his kicking and punching. For some reason, the man just took it while his partner looked on. These temper tantrums were probably commonplace when dealing with him.

"I'm sorry, Boss! It won't happen again!"

"No, it won't!"

Someone flew past the Batman down the alley and towards the scuffle. He looked back to Tex's bike and found it absent of a rider. She was sprinting directly for the Penguin, set to ruin any surveillance for the night in 4 ... 3 ... 2 ...

Tex slammed into the Penguin and his victim with surprising speed and force, knocking all three of them down. Penguin had been reaching for something in his pocket, but whatever it was went flying into the night when she hit him. Since she had the upper hand for the moment, Tex used the opportunity to attempt to knock him out with her fists.

"I think I know who Reggie was talking about," said the second man, who didn't bother to stick around after his witty remark. His co-worker quickly followed suit, the two of them running back into the bar to call for some help.

But Penguin was having none of it. With an astounding reserve of strength and agility no one would have assumed him capable of, Penguin threw his attacker off him and pounded her skull on the pavement two or three times, completely disorienting her. He scrambled to his feet, but did not let up, continuing to kick her in the ribs and face. It only took a few of these blows before Tex gave up on fighting back and curled into a protective ball as he beat the ever living crap out of her.

"Just another Batman fan to annoy me," he growled, punctuating his frustration with blows to her back. "You're going to find out where all the other ones went."

To her credit, she didn't cry out. For a split second, Batman thought that she deserved it for acting like an absolute idiot and ignoring his specific instructions to stay put and do as he said. The next second, he decided that this kind of merciless beating, even if she had signed up for it by acting like a vigilante in the first place, was cruel and undeserved. So he started up the Batpod's engine and made sure to rev it up.

This, Penguin heard. His head snapped towards the incoming Dark Knight and he ran to the street. Right then, a Rolls Royce pulled over to the curb, stopped long enough for the Penguin to climb in, and sped off just as quickly as it came. Batman stopped by Tex, allowing Penguin to get away. Tex slowly uncurled from her ball and sat up. " _Once again: ouch._ "

"What were you thinking?" he snapped in her face as he got off the Batpod. "I told you to stay put!"

Tex stood up, pausing to make sure she wouldn't fall over. She vaguely resembled a drunken robot. " _One. You are not my boss._ " She calmly walked over to a pile of cardboard next to a dumpster. " _Two. Penguin was about to kill someone. I had to stop him._ "

"You didn't say anything."

" _You told me to shut up. Which is invalidated by reason number one._ " She lifted up a box or two and found something underneath them. She walked back to Batman and presented her treasure. " _Three. Penguin's murder weapon of choice. With fingerprints._ " She held a small revolver by the barrel. He automatically put out his hand to take it, but she held it back. " _Reason number one._ "

"I'll turn it over to the police. They might be able to get a match."

" _Well of course they'll get a match. Did you think that was fun? Plus I have this to go with it. Four._ " She pulled a small black wallet out of her sleeve and opened it up. In the first credit card window was Oswald Cobblepot's driver's license. " _Sometimes you have to be subtle._ "

"That was subtle?"

" _Oh, and I'm fine, by the way_." She knocked her helmet for emphasis. " _I have a hard head. Useful for when men try to crush my skull in. Thanks for asking._ "

Batman held out his hand once again. "Tex, please. Let me give them to the police."

" _Who's your contact?_ "

"I don't have one."

" _Of course you have a contact. Every good vigilante has a contact in the police force, and you're the best. Who is it?_ "

"I can't tell you."

" _Is it the Commissioner? Because he's the only trustworthy one on the force._ "

"He's not the only one."

" _Really?_ "

"I'm not going to let anything fall into the wrong hands."

" _Because you're the best?_ "

"I know them. I also know Gotham a lot better than you do."

She mulled over that for a moment. " _That is a fact,_ " she conceded. She placed the gun and the wallet in his hands. Batman quickly put the two vital pieces of evidence in separate pouches on his utility belt. " _I hurt. A lot. Don't you make me regret this._ "

"I won't. I promise."

There was a _beep beep! Beep beep!_ from her pocket, and she took out a phone. " _Shoot, I'm late. Maybe I'll see you around._ " Tex waved and sprinted back to her motorcycle, started the engine, and disappeared into the streets of Gotham.

* * *

"Slow night?" said Alfred as Batman returned to the Batcave. He stood at the top of the stairs, closing the hidden door from the mansion behind him with one hand and carefully carrying a tray with dinner and coffee in the other.

"Actually, it was surprisingly violent for my not having done anything." After parking his Batpod, he sat down at his wall of computer screens and took off his hood, setting it down on the desk nearby. "You remember that new vigilante I told you about a couple weeks ago?"

"Tex?"

"She showed up again tonight and took care of everything." He took out the gun and the wallet from his pockets and set them on the desk next to his hood. "Eleven men at once."

"Eleven?" Alfred repeated incredulously. He set the tray down next to the Batman, or Master Bruce as he preferred to call him.

"No one that good just shows up in Gotham without a motive, and it seems that her only priority is to take down the Red Triangle gang." He opened up a web browser to a search engine to start researching the vigilante who had just decided to make Gotham her home.

"Perhaps she has a personal vendetta against the Penguin. We've seen that here before."

He shook his head. "She's not holding a grudge. Besides, she took a pretty solid beating just to get these out of his pockets," he said, gesturing to the evidence on the table.

"You let him beat up a girl?"

"It wasn't intentional," Bruce snapped, defending himself. "I thought she could take care of herself. She took a bullet to the back of the head and she seemed fine."

"Doesn't mean she doesn't have a concussion. You've come home with plenty of those yourself."

"At this point, there's nothing I can do about her." He returned to his online search, but the top hits were the same thing and overall useless.

"Freelancer Texas," Alfred read off the screen. "She seems to fit the profile."

Bruce shut down the computer in frustration. "A search engine isn't going to cut it."


	6. Chapter Five

I walked into work slightly later than usual–9:07 instead of 8:55–but I had a good reason for it. And it wasn't like Mr. Wayne would be in before noon, I reasoned. Not that it made me feel any better.

So it figured that as soon as I made it to my desk, Mr. Wayne was already in his office waiting for me. He came out right when I was about to sit down. "Jenny! You're late."

I eased myself into my chair very, very slowly. "Hardly. You're early." I clutched my ribs when I made it down. They didn't take kindly to movement like walking or breathing after I broke them. Last night was rough.

"Are you alright?" said Mr. Wayne. I couldn't hide it that well.

"I'm fine. I had ... softball practice last night. It didn't go so well." Man, it hurt to talk.

"What happened?"

"I got hit by a softball - twice - in the ribs. The pitcher apologized, but it was mostly my fault." I sighed. "Man, does he have a strong arm."

I could see Mr. Wayne's brows furrow in concern, but there was no need to be alarmed. "You can take the day off if you're not feeling well."

"Mr. Wayne, I'm fine. There's not a whole lot to do here anyway. And besides, it looks bad if I take a sick day after only two weeks of working here."

"Really, if you need to-"

"I don't. Mr. Wayne, not to be rude, but why are you here?"

"I own this company?"

"Yes, but you don't have anything to do until 1. Is there something I need to know?"

He shook his head and shrugged. "Nope." He started for his office, but stopped and turned back to me. "Wait, yes. I'm having a housewarming party tomorrow and I want you to be there."

I was floored by this invitation and there was no way it didn't show in my expression. A Wayne Party. A _Wayne_ Party. "I have no idea what to say."

"Say yes."

"Wasn't your house rebuilt two years ago?"

"Well, yeah," he replied hesitantly. "Doesn't mean I can't have more than one, or two, housewarmings. Just tell me you're coming."

"Why do you want me there so bad?"

"It's handy to have a secretary at these things. I always end up spending a lot of money on spontaneous business transactions, and I don't want to deal with the fine print. Why? Don't you like parties?"

"I don't like people. Yes, I'll go. I'll be there."

"Perfect! Thank you. The party starts at 8." He went back to his office with a bit of a spring in his step, and I was left wondering where in the world I was going to get a dress on this short of notice.

I admit, I left work early, but that was because Mr. Wayne could see how much pain I was in even though I tried my best to hide it. I've never cracked any ribs before in my life, and I was beginning to understand why the people in the emergency room gave me such sympathetic glances last night. Anyway, he gave me enough time to shop for a suitable gown, experience a minor panic attack at the prices, and have a sudden craving for a pain-killer addiction, all within three hours. Then I enlisted some help in the form of Imogen who promised to do my hair and help with my dress shopping, and then went home to do some much needed homework for a lab on Saturday. By the time I drove back home, I was so distracted that I didn't even care that some jerk with a shiny black and red motorcycle had stolen my parking space.

I was going to a _Wayne_ party tomorrow.

* * *

"You look gorgeous! I feel like a fairy godmother!" said Imogen, spinning me around.

"I feel like I'm going to suffocate," I moaned. The two of us decided on a navy blue evening gown with a pleated bodice and some beaded flowers at the waist, and with it I wore dark blue, round toe pumps that were probably the most comfortable part of the entire ensemble. Fancy enough for a party, but serious enough for my me. Of course, it was tighter than a corset so it wouldn't slide off me, which made my still-sore ribs complain, and there was an incredible amount of tape helping to hold it up because I wasn't as well endowed as the makers of the dress thought I would be. "I have to find a new gym."

"What you need to do is be more careful at softball practice. You had to pick the one with the tricky zipper, didn't you."

"It's the only one I can breathe in."

"Which reminds me." Imogen ran to my medicine cabinet and retrieved the bottle of Tylenol. "Don't forget this."

I threw it in my clutch and wrapped her in a hug. "What would I do without you?"

"I shudder to think what you would have done to your hair." She had done an amazing job on such short notice. I think she was waiting for this moment for years, when she could just go all out. The best I can describe it is that it involved a lot of curling and a couple cans of hairspray. In the end, it was an updo that I would be loathe to undo at any point in time.

"You know I wouldn't have done anything."

"I know. You'd better knock 'em dead tonight."

"That's ... not what I'm hoping for."

"I don't know what you have to be afraid of, Jenny. You've been obsessed with Gotham's elite for years. Now you get the chance to meet them in person, and you don't want to go."

"There's a huge difference between listening to rumors and actually talking to them."

"So what are you waiting for? The taxi's waiting!" Then Imogen practically kicked me out of my own apartment and locked me out.

I went downstairs, which is no easy task if you live on the fourth floor and are dressed like I was, and got in my waiting black cab. The driver was professional and completely un-talkative. All he wanted to know was where I wanted to be dropped off. And that was just the way I liked it.

I live a half-hour away from Wayne Manor, which meant I had plenty of time to collect my senses and wits. Imogen was right. I had been worrying too much over how I was supposed to act at a major social event, rather than being excited that I was invited to a place filled with lies and manipulation. Oh, and money. Couldn't forget that part. I wasn't surprised to see a huge number of expensive cars parked all around Mr. Wayne's mansion. My driver dropped me off in front of the steps to the door and helped me out. Looked like I was the only one who had to take a taxi. I paid him and started my long walk up to the door. "Good luck tonight," the driver called back to me.

"Thank you." I was going to need it.

I was deliberately slowing my steps. I really wasn't eager to be going in so soon. A couple passed me on my way up, although they were sort of rushing to get there. She was young with bleached-blonde hair, probably in her late twenties, and addicted to plastic surgery. That nose was very fake, and her lips, well. He was middle aged and slightly balding. What hair he did have was rapidly going grey. He was slightly overweight, some of which came from his substantial wallet. Conclusion: Expensive call girl and rich businessman suffering a mid-life crisis. I hoped the others wouldn't be nearly as bad.

I finally made it to the doorway. The doors had been thrown wide open so there wouldn't be any hindrance to the party. I was bombarded by the atmosphere. There was a full size orchestra playing a waltz and dancers swirling all around the dance floor. I thought I might have been overdressed for a moment, but then I was quickly proved wrong when I saw all those gowns and tuxedos. All around the ballroom were tables with refreshments piled high. Most of them I couldn't name, mostly foreign or too expensive for me to have tried before, although I did spot a couple fondue pots and a chocolate fountain. Something for everyone. The entire place hummed with conversation, nearly overpowering the orchestra.

I stood at the edge of the ballroom just watching everyone. I recognized several people, but the problem was I knew them all from magazines and the news. No one here actually knew me. I was going to be alone tonight, unless I spontaneously made a few friends. Not likely. People didn't like how I could look straight through them, and I didn't know how not to. So I took a strawberry from a refreshment table and a glass of champagne from a passing waiter and prepared to learn about all of their dirty secrets.

But there's only so much I can learn from watching and eavesdropping. I could tell which people a dominant personality, this group was submissive and acting passive-aggressively, that guy was a pathological liar, everyone was lying, and he was cheating on her with that other women he was watching across the room, and who exactly knew about the affair and was holding their tongues. I wasn't surprised at all by the results. With a crowd like this, anyone who showed a sign of weakness like a shrinking bankbook or a cheating lover, was subject to the wolves.

Then I heard someone calling, "Jenny! You made it!"

Mr. Wayne appeared out of the crowd with a beautiful girl on his arm. No one else had noticed him before he called to me. I don't know how he can sneak through his own party like that, but it was a talent I was about to exploit. "Mr. Wayne," I said as cheerily as I could manage. "Of course I came."

At this point he introduced me to his friend. She wasn't especially gorgeous, but she was curiously pretty. She had curly, light brown hair with glints of dark gold in the right light, a permanent smile to her face, and lively brown eyes. She wore her hair in a loose french braid and had a red silk rose pinned at the nape of her neck. Her dress was a simple, but elegant long burgundy gown with a sweetheart neckline and a bow on her right hip. "Star, this is Jenny Harkness, my secretary. Jenny, this is Star."

She turned her full attention on me and gave me a smile worthy of her name. "Jenny, I've been so excited to meet you!"

"Really?" This was a surprise to me. How it the world would she have heard of me? Oh, right. I was nearly as famous as my sister. Nearly. "You're from New York, aren't you."

She was taken off guard by this out-of-the-blue remark. "I am. How did you know?" Her eyes suddenly lit up with embarrassment and understanding. "Oh, no I wasn't talking about _that._ No, I heard about how you got rid of that Cobblepot bore. Practically threw him out of the office."

"That's ... a bit of an overstatement. A fabrication, actually." I directed that last sentence at Mr. Wayne. He fidgeted a bit under our glances, then quickly excused himself to get them something to drink.

We watched him slip back into the crowd. This time, he drew away a bit of the crowd's attention, and others wanted to borrow his time for a bit. "Did he really say that?" I asked.

"Sort of. He said you were a genius, like a detective or something. Then I pretended to be jealous, then he said you threw him out the window, then I pretended to be insulted and made him invite you to the party so I could see for myself."

"Oh." Nothing but a game. I was here because of a playful lovers quarrel. "I see. I'm not really a genius. He was making that up too."

Star shook her head. "No he wasn't. I can tell when he's lying. He's a terrible liar, believe me. So how do you do it? How do you read people like that?"

"It's not a party trick. All you have to do is observe and deduce." I let my annoyance show through in my voice, but she couldn't be dissuaded. She just kept looking at me, expecting more until I eventually gave in. "For instance, I can tell you've been working with clay for a while because your hands are quite dry and you didn't quite get the last of it out from under your fingernails." She quickly and discreetly cleaned them. "I could tell you were from New York because of your accent. You try to hide it, but it still comes out a bit when you're excited. Also, a lot of theater actors live in New York, so I knew it was a safe bet." I had to stop because once I get going, some people get very offended.

"That's amazing. You have to teach me."

"Now? No."

"Why not?" I swore I saw her stomp a foot in frustration like a child, but that might have been my imagination.

"It takes time, Star. Believe me, it takes time."

She sighed in defeat. "Fine, but I'll hold you to it. You're as bad as Lucius."

"Who?"

"Lucius Fox." Then she spotted someone in the crowd. "Oh, there he is. Do you want to meet him? Lucius!" She waved at a black gentleman in his sixties with greying hair, and gestured him over to us. He politely excused himself from the conversation he was in and started on over towards us. "He's a good friend of Bruce's," she explained.

"Star, it's good to see you again," he said with a patient smile.

To my surprise, but not his, she suddenly hugged him. He wasn't a touchy-feely sort of person, but he seemed to like or tolerate her. "I thought you weren't coming."

"I wasn't, but then I couldn't think of an excuse to stay home."

"Oh, this is Jenny Harkness," she said, remembering to introduce me. "Jenny, Lucius Fox."

"Nice to meet you, Mr. Fox," I said, shaking his hand. I could swear I had seen him before. "You look familiar. Didn't you-"

"Run Wayne Enterprises at one point or another? Yes," he answered for me.

"And the R&D Department," Star interjected. "You still owe me a tour."

"I don't work there anymore," he playfully argued.

"But you still have the clout to go anywhere you want in there!"

"What's in the R&D Department?" I had to ask.

"Research and Development of new, interesting technology," said Mr. Fox. This I already knew.

"Freaking _awesome_ technology, he means," Star clarified. "It's like an airplane museum. You don't exactly understand how everything works, but the science behind it all is amazing. Bruce showed me around once, but he didn't really know anything."

"What was that?" said Mr. Wayne, appearing behind her, noticeably absent of any drinks.

"Just saying how you should stick to napping in meetings."

"Oh, thanks," he teased. "Do you like this song?"

"I think I do." Mr. Wayne took her hand to lead her to the dance floor. "Nice to meet you Jenny!"

Mr. Fox and I watched the two of them hurry to the field of dancers and joining them. As soon as they were safely out of earshot, I asked, "What's the real reason she can't go?"

"She's a little ... _curious_."

I understood completely. She likes to touch things, which probably explains why she liked doing pottery so much. "She reminds me of my sister. Jackie couldn't keep her hands off _anything_. Our family was banned from a few museums for a while."

Neither one of us were any good with meaningless small talk, so we were quiet for a bit. The dance was hypnotic, and Mr. Wayne and Star seemed to be genuinely enjoying themselves. But apparently our silence is a sign we're doing something wrong. "I'm not one for parties either," Mr. Fox said, breaking the silence.

"I've never been to one before, so I can't say I don't like it yet."

"You just can't seem to get a straight answer from anyone here."

"I know what you mean. I keep wishing that man over there would just tell his wife he's cheating on her because she already knows. But, yeah, I think this is my first and last-"

"Excuse me," said a gentleman, tapping me on the shoulder. He was a good foot taller than me and had wavy blonde hair he had expertly tamed. His hand was rough with aged, unused callouses that were barely noticeable. His tuxedo, unlike all the others, was a rental. "May I have this dance?" he asked.

Against my better judgment, I said, "Of course," and gave him my hand. Mr. Fox gave me a knowing look that said, _Good Luck._ I sent him one back that said, _Knock it off._

We joined the dance floor with the Foxtrot. He held my hand quite gently, like it was an honor to be dancing with me. "My name is James. James Carroll."

"Jenny Harkness."

"How do you know Bruce?"

"I work for Mr. Wayne. I'm a secretary and a part-time student."

"Have you been there long?"

"Two weeks. Two very short weeks."

"I've only been his neighbor for a year and a half, but I didn't think he even knew my name."

"Where are you originally from?"

"Colorado." That was a lie. He was avoiding my eyes and I noticed his irises tighten just slightly. But I just didn't want to call him on it.

We chatted for several minutes about anything and nothing. He seemed to have an odd fascination with _Alice in Wonderland_ and Johnny Depp. I was actually enjoying myself. And so long as I kept my mouth shut, I seemed to have made a friend.

So it's fitting that right then, the party was crashed by none other than a very familiar, stocky man in a severely outdated suit with an umbrella of all things, who screeched loud enough to drown out the orchestra entirely, "Hey Brucie! Didn't know you were having a party. Why didn't you invite me? Now we can _really_ get the party started!"

"Who in the world is that?" said James.

"Oswald Cobblepot," I spat. "Give me a minute, I'm going to go find out what he wants." And then get rid of him.

Cobblepot was busy attacking the refreshments, pushing other guests out of his way and telling them to go take a hike. Anyone within a ten-foot radius suddenly relocated to another part of the ballroom. As soon as he was done with one table, he made a bee-line for Mr. Wayne and Star. This was where I came in, quickly intercepting him before he could do anymore damage. "Mr. Cobblepot," I said as loudly as I could without shouting. "What can I do for you?"

"You can let me talk to Bruce." He tried walking around me, but I blocked his path again.

"He's over this way," I gestured to a place away from the party. "If you could just follow me."

"But I can see him right behind you-"

"This way. Please." There was no more civility in my voice, and he did as I asked.

I took him to a hallway that was far enough away from the party that he wouldn't be a bother, but still completely in sight of the guests. I didn't want anyone getting any funny ideas. Most of the crowd's attention had been drawn to us, even if the party hadn't come to a standstill, but at least they were trying to be subtle about it. I'm pretty sure they were genuinely worried about me. At least one waiter - no, he was a butler - stood at the end of the hallway and wouldn't take his eyes off us. Mr. Cobblepot didn't seem to notice, so I didn't notice either.

What I did notice was some movement in a doorway, then it was gone.

"This is cozy..."

"Mr. Cobblepot, what do you want?" I demanded.

"Bruce and I never got to finish our discussion."

"You've been banned from the building and you know Wayne Enterprises won't have anything more to do with you. How is acting like an obnoxious loon going to help you here?"

"Don't you _dare_ talk to me like that!" he snapped, throwing a finger in my face.

"And don't you insult my intellect! Why are you here?"

He dropped his buffoon persona and replaced it with a smirk. "Nothing gets past you, does it?" He chuckled quietly, but there was nothing amusing behind it.

"Not much. For instance, I noticed that there are two guests who shouldn't be here and are going through Mr. Wayne's home."

Alright, that was a bluff based on the movement I saw earlier. Sherlock Holmes would be very, _very_ ashamed of me. Still, it got the response I wanted. Mr. Cobblepot's eyes narrowed in anger, although he tried to keep his smile in place. "I wouldn't know anything about that."

"Now _that_ was a lie. It's written all over your face."

He relaxed again and gave me a friendlier smile. "Listen, Jackie."

"Jenny."

"Jenny. Would you like a job?"

"I have a job."

"I could use someone like you to help me find the unsavory secrets of Gotham city. We could start with Bruce."

"Absolutely not."

"I don't think you understand. This is a job with substantial pay. We're talking seven figures."

"Mr. Cobblepot, I will not be involved in blackmail, especially not with you. Now, I would appreciate it if you and your friends would leave Mr. Wayne and his business alone. _Now_."

"You listen to me," he hissed, grabbing my arm. "I leave when I feel like leaving." I pulled my arm out of his grasp and he marched back to the party, pulling a cigar out of his pocket as he went.

My arm felt bruised where he touched it, but it was probably fine. I went after him, but was stopped by the butler who was listening in. "Are you alright, miss?" he said in a British accent.

"I'm fine. Tell me we have security."

"Just tell me who needs to be escorted out. I'll take care of it."

"Apart from the obvious, there are two other men going through the house, and they're not here to steal the silver. They'll probably be looking for an office or any personal paperwork."

He turned away from me to make the call to security, but I saw his eyes go wide when I told him about the intruders. Then he practically ran away to go find the other intruders. Two men entered the crowd and converged on Cobblepot who was trying to dance. Each of them grabbed an arm and forcibly dragged him out the door. He let out a long string of obscenities and insults right up until he was thrown down the steps, at which point the cursing became shouts and grunts of pain. Another man dragged out one of the intruders who swiftly followed his boss.

Then came the butler with the second man's arm twisted behind his back, and for as old as he was, it didn't seem like he was putting any effort into it at all. He threw the stranger out the door, and slammed them shut with an echoing _BANG!_ that could be roughly translated as: Good Riddance! The audience erupted in applause, and I joined them. The butler didn't even seem to notice, and quickly got back to work.

I intercepted him as he picked up another tray of champagne. "Thank you for that," I told him.

"Oh, it was nothing, miss," he replied with a smile.

Mr. Wayne burst out of the crowd, intending to catch his butler before he tried to disappear again. "Alfred, what was that?"

"Just removing a trespasser," he replied. "Nothing to worry about."

"Yes there is," I interrupted. "The man is a modern-day Charles Augustus Milverton. A blackmailer," I clarified when I saw their confused expressions. "He just tried to offer me a job to collect material on you."

Mr. Wayne raised an eyebrow. "You didn't ..."

I shook my head. "Of course not. There's nothing blackmail-worthy on you anyway. What I'm trying to say is that he'll be back. Probably not tonight, but later. Have a good night, Mr. Wayne."

My patience was entirely spent for the night, and my ribs were in so much agony that no amount of Tylenol was going to fix, so I headed towards the door. Unfortunately, my plans to leave unnoticed were spoiled when James Carroll caught up to me. "You're leaving?"

"I'm sorry, but the night's no good now."

"Let me drive you home."

"I'd rather take a taxi."

"But it will be a while before it comes."

I sighed in frustration. He had a point. I did not want to wait around for a ride. "Fine. But I refuse to be good company, and I'm not inviting you in."


	7. Chapter Six

Right after Jenny left, Star was starting to feel tired, so Bruce kindly offered to drive her home, which gave Bruce the perfect alibi for the night. Leaving what was left of the party to Alfred, he donned the Batman mantle and took off on his Batpod.

The address on Oswald Cobblepot's driver's license was wrong, so he had no choice but to follow him home. Cobblepot had ranted and raged outside Wayne Manor for several minutes before getting in his Rolls Royce and driving away. A strategically placed tracker planted in the bumper by Alfred gave him the advantage. Penguin had a nasty habit of changing cars to avoid being tracked like that, but tonight he didn't expect Batman to be within miles of Wayne Manor.

Penguin lived in Old Gotham Town, a place that seemed trapped in another era. The homes had been moderately wealthy back in the 1800s when the city was founded, but had fallen into dismal disrepair, even though they were protected by the Gotham Historical Society. There was a dead, rotting oak in the center of the brown lawn with a fence around the trunk. The siding was falling off with a few patches and the roof need to be replaced immediately. He didn't trust the porch to hold his weight, although apparently it could hold the Penguin.

Why in the world, if he could afford a mansion in the palisades, would he live here? Then he noticed a piece of wood with rusted iron letters hanging above the door. _Cobblepot._ It was his family's home, a place he would be reluctant to leave or abandon like his Victorian suits.

Batman hid his Batpod in some dangerously overgrown bushes three doors down the street. From the looks of things, the house had been empty for some time. That was one thing he liked about this neighborhood. Most others had nosy neighbors. This one kept to itself, if there was anyone inhabiting the houses at all anymore.

Penguin was furious, and his house suffered for it. Dishes and bric-a-brac were shattered, knick-knacks were thrown against the walls, and a multitude of birds were upset over the noise. That alone seemed to calm him down for a bit. The walls were thin enough that Batman could hear him talking to his birds until they settled down. Finally, Penguin stormed out of the house, slammed the door, and left in his car to go take care of some business.

The house was silent except for a few birds, but Batman still waited ten minutes just in case anyone was still inside or Penguin decided to come back. When he was certain no one was home, he shot a grappling cable into the roof and climbed into an unlocked second floor window. He entered a forgotten storage room filled with cedar chests, cardboard boxes, trunks and enough dust and cobwebs to knit a coat. His landing stirred it up and nearly suffocated him. Batman got out of there quickly before he started coughing up a storm.

In the hall were one or two closed doors on one side of the hall. The other side had several windows, each with a dead houseplant on the ledge. On the opposite end of the hall was a dark staircase and a door cracked open. There was a wedge of orange light on the floor that disappeared for a second. Someone was in there.

Luckily, the door didn't creak as it opened. This room was a study with bookcases on two adjoining walls. They were completely filled with books, binders, and papers. There was a leather armchair in that corner with a stack of books on the seat. There was a spotless desk against the other wall with a set of fountain pens and a lamp, which is where the light was coming from. The desk was missing its chair. On the fourth wall was a fireplace. Two painted portraits hung on either side, and several small photographs stood on the mantle.

The most notable aspect of the room was the rolling office chair at the bookshelves, and Tex balancing precariously on it, trying to reach a book. "Breaking and entering now?"

The chair flew out from under her feet and she barely managed to hang on to a shelf. " _Don't DO that!_ " she growled.

"Sorry," he muttered.

" _Shut up and help me down._ "

He took her by the waist and helped her put her feet back on the floor. "What are you doing here?"

" _Same thing you are._ " She handed him a binder from a shelf at eye level. " _Looking for evidence._ "

The binder was full of original blueprints for a bank that hadn't been hit by the Red Triangle Gang yet. "What else have you found?"

" _This._ " Tex pulled out five books one inch on four different shelves, and the spines of a tall series of books popped out like a door on the bottom shelf. The spines were fake, and made of good leather, but what was behind them was more interesting. A safe cleverly disguised as books. " _Cool, isn't it? I was doing this for about ten minutes._ " She shut the façade and the books slid back into place. Then she pulled the books back out.

Batman stopped her before she could close the door again. "Let's see what's in here first."

" _I already tried his birthday. Then I got bored and started looking for some_ _Harry Potter_ _books._ "

"You're a terrible burglar," he teased.

" _That's a good thing._ "

He tore his gloves off with his teeth so he could get to work on cracking the safe. The idea of cleaning up his fingerprints didn't appeal to him in the slightest, but this was something that required all of his sense of touch. He had to feel for the tumblers falling into place, not just listen to them. "This could take a while," he warned.

" _Longer than fifteen minutes?_ " She sounded apprehensive.

"A lot longer, so I'll need you to be quiet." He threw her a nearby book. "Here. Read this."

" _I hate_ _Candide_ _._ "

"Then go look through his desk. See if he wrote it down."

Tex carefully pawed through Penguin's things while Batman worked on the safe. It didn't look like he was doing much, but carefully listening and feeling for the tumblers is mind-numbingly exhaustive work, especially after nearly forty-five minutes of it. After finding nothing useful, Tex was starting to hover over him, and it was getting annoying.

He had the first two numbers. It was just the last one, and Tex was figuratively breathing down his neck. Then, the last tumbler fell into place. They held their breath as Batman pulled the lever …

The door opened silently and effortlessly and revealed the safe's bounty – a large stack of papers, manila envelopes, and folders. Batman stood up, put his gloves back on, and paced for a minute to get the feeling back in his legs. Tex immediately grabbed a handful of papers and started looking through it. " _Good job,_ " she said. " _I wouldn't have been able to do that._ "

"Thank you." He found a nearby handkerchief on Penguin's desk and started wiping down the safe for his fingerprints.

" _This looks like photographs, love letters, arrest records, this is supposed to be a sealed juvie record, newspaper clippings …_ "

Batman started going through the stack himself. It was organized alphabetically by name. "This is all blackmail material."

Tex wandered over to the fireplace while reading something in her stack. " _This is horrible. He's Charles Augustus Milverton embodied._ "

His head snapped up at that name. "Say that again."

" _He's Charles Augustus Milverton_."

"Who is that?"

" _A particularly nasty blackmailer._ " She pressed a button next to the fireplace that lit it. Within a few moments, there was a roaring fire. He could see exactly where this was going. " _The public doesn't need to know about any of this._ "

"Tex, this is evidence," he warned.

" _I know._ " She threw her stack into the fire and watched it to make sure it burned. Her unspoken statement was clear. This man could ruin lives, and she refused to let him hurt anyone else. When she went back to the safe to get more of the papers, Batman handed her his stack.

So began the work of taking armfuls of the blackmail to the fireplace. They would each grab a handful of papers, carry them to the fireplace, and spread them around the fire to make sure they all burned quickly. Batman found a few papers that he thought should be kept: a list of chemical formulas in a binder, a log book of payments received, and a list of 20 names, at the bottom of which was Bruce Wayne.

" _You didn't happen to bring any marshmallows, did you?_ "

"What do you make of this?" He handed her the stack of chemical formulas.

" _Crystalline explosives,_ " she declared, and handed them back so she could stir the fire with the poker.

It sounded familiar, like Wayne Enterprises had been working on it at one point. "What is it exactly?"

" _It's a type of explosive that looks like crystal or glass when it dries. It's not easily detonated, but terror groups are interested in it because it's undetectable to most bomb-detecting measures. It's dangerous to make because it's so unstable when it's wet._ "

"Then why would the Penguin be interested in this?"

" _Mass production?_ "

"Unlikely. Too expensive, and like you said, too unstable." As he mulled over why Penguin would try to produce this steroid, Batman heard a creak on the stairs. He looked to Tex who also had her head up. "Hear that?"

Tex touched her temple and seemed to stare through the wall at the stairs. " _Solomon Grundy_ _._ "

She threw the last of the blackmail into the fireplace and Batman slammed the safe shut right before the door burst open. Grundy completely filled the doorway, so much so that he could barely squeeze through the doorframe. It took him a few moments to size up the situation, squinting to adjust his eyes in the darkness and sniffing at the foreign smells. His stark yellow eyes locked on the two intruders. "Batman," he growled, "and his little sparrow."

" _It's Tex_ ," she corrected, much to the annoyance of Batman.

Grundy swung one fist at Tex, and she flew backwards into the fireplace. Batman dodged the next three punches, expertly gliding away from him like a shadow, and returned with his own blows in his solar plexus. The man was harder than a brick wall, but he still gave a bit. The overall effect, however, was minimal. Grundy threw out several more punches until one finally connected. It barely glanced his shoulder, but it was enough to throw him off balance and make him vulnerable for the next one that hit him in the jaw.

Batman fell back into the bookshelves. Grundy's fist destroyed the shelf just above his head, and pulled back to deliver another blow. Batman got ready to dodge him again, when a burning log hit Grundy's head. The two of them turned to see Tex standing up from the fireplace holding a log in each of her hands. She was casually flipping a log in her hand, then juggling it between the two before she threw each one right at Grundy's head.

Enraged and slightly burnt, Grundy charged Tex, who darted out of the room and nearly tripped going down the staircase. Grundy chased her downstairs while Batman pulled himself out of the wreckage of bookshelves, snatched the pile of chemical formulas, and followed the two before Tex could get herself killed.

They left the staircase barely useable in their wake. Tex ran into the kitchen and intended to use the table as a barrier between her and Grundy, or at least keep him running in circles for a bit. Instead, Grundy removed it completely by smashing it to smithereens with his fists. Tex looked between him and the pile of splinters. " _I was not expecting that._ "

Before Grundy could pummel her, Batman leaped onto his back and attempted to put him in a chokehold. And like the first time, Grundy fought back by ramming him into the walls. Not that he was an expert on this sort of thing, but at least cabinets and refrigerator doors were considerably softer than shipping containers, especially since they could dent and collapse under their combined weight.

Tex seemed to be getting ready to attack in some way. "Get out of here!" Batman shouted at her between blows.

" _This didn't work out so well for you last time_ ," she replied.

"I know." Grundy crushed another one of Penguin's cabinets with Batman taking the brunt of the blow. "Go!"

But Tex had no intention of listening. She climbed onto a counter to get a couple feet of height, grabbed Grundy by his clammy shoulders, and solidly head-butted him three times. This dazed him enough that Batman could make an escape. He grabbed Tex's arm and pulled her off the counter before she could swing a frying pan at him. They made a break for the sitting room, Batman pushing Tex ahead of him.

They were just about to make it to the door when Grundy, having recovered unnaturally quickly, tackled Batman. Tex had a hand on the doorknob, but spun around to help him. "Just go!" he ordered as he kicked Grundy in the face and broke his front teeth.

" _Not likely._ " She swung her frying pan at his face. It rang comically with the force of the impact. She attempted another blow, but Grundy caught her arm, stopping her in her tracks.

He glared at her, blood streaming down his chin. "For such a small mouse, you are very annoying." With a short heave, he threw her like a rag doll into the far wall by her arm. Tex hit the drywall and bounced off onto the floor, paint and plaster dust following her. In attempting to run to her, Batman was caught by his cape and swung into the same wall. Tex was trying sit up with just one arm to support her, but couldn't manage to put enough effort into it.

Grundy picked up a solid oak coffee table, lifted it over his head, and slowly approached the pair of vigilantes. Not one to be outdone by brute force, Batman retrieved a couple Batarangs from his utility belt and threw them into Grundy's right bicep. His arm buckled and the table came crashing down on his head, knocking him out cold.

"Can you walk?"

She grabbed his cape to help her stand up, keeping one arm curled against her. " _He hurt my arm, not my legs. You don't need to be so worried about me_ _._ "

They made for the back door, and when they found there was none, Batman made one with a small grenade. Tex was slow climbing out the hole in the wall, and when Batman followed, she stopped to catch her breath. "Let's get out of here." He touched her arm to lead her away from the house, and she snatched it back in pain.

" _Ow! Just give me a second._ " She rotated her shoulder a couple times. " _Think I strained a muscle._ "

She had probably taken the worst of the injuries trying to distract Grundy from Batman. Things could have been worse for both of them without the other. He took both her hands in each of his and turned them palm up. "How did you do that?"

" _Do what?_ "

"You weren't wearing any gloves when you held those logs. How are you not burned?"

" _It's a long and painful story_."

"Shorten it."

" _No._ " When Batman continued to give her a questioning glare, she pulled her hands back, but he held tight. " _Let go._ "

"Not until you tell me the truth."

" _The truth? The truth is that it doesn't matter. My hands are fine. Leave it at that._ "

Something rumbled inside the house. Grundy was coming to. They dropped everything and tore off through the yard and onto the street. "How's your head?"

" _It's fine!_ "

They split up, Batman to his Batpod, and Tex to … wherever Tex disappeared to. As soon as he uncovered his bike, he took off down the street directly towards downtown Gotham. A few moments later, a black and red Ducati fell into place behind him.

* * *

There was something slightly off about that girl. Last night, after Commissioner Gordon had wrapped things up with the Red Triangle and the gun buy that went wrong, he gave Batman a call, something he very rarely did. "We just pulled the security tapes for the warehouse," he said with no pretense of pleasantries.

"It's been abandoned for years. They shouldn't have been recording."

"We've been watching it for a while. You didn't mention you have a partner."

"That's not my partner. I work alone."

"Then who is he? Can he be trusted?"

"She. Her name is Tex, and I'm working on that second part."

"You don't know?" Gordon sounded incredulous. Batman may be someone that exuded an omnipotent air, but he was still human after all. Gordon failed to grasp this concept sometimes, especially when he needed information.

"I'm inclined to believe she's trustworthy."

"Then I'll take your word for it. For now. I need to know what happened to these guns."

Right. The guns. He had nearly forgotten about them. "What about them?"

"Your friend completely destroyed them. The tapes show her crushing each one in her bare hands. Do you think she's related to … a certain man in Metropolis?"

"No," he said definitively. "She's human with human strength, nothing more. I've used a hydraulics system with my suit to crush guns by hand before. She has a similar machine hidden in her sleeves. Don't worry about Tex, Commissioner. I'll take care of her." He cut the connection before Gordon could argue.

This was an uncomfortable position he was in. One of being out of the loop, of not knowing enough. But of everything he was concerned about, only one thought he voiced aloud: "How did she do that?"


	8. Chapter Seven

It was a Tuesday, less than a week after that little disaster of a party. The last thing I wanted to think about was Oswald Cobblepot. And yet there on my desk amidst the stack of mail was a package wrapped in brown paper and twine addressed to Mr. Bruce Wayne from Oswald Cobblepot. The address lable was handwritten in ink from a fountain pen that splattered twice and smudged a bit with blotting paper.

 _Why? Why do you do this to me?_ I cursed as I cut the twine and tore open the paper. I opened the box inside and pulled out a small white card.

_Dear Mr. Wayne,_

_It's a pity we weren't able to come to an agreement. I should like to have done business with you. Our companies would have been very successful together. Perhaps with a bit of change on both our parts._

_Please accept this gift with my best wishes._

_Sincerely,_

_Oswald Cobblepot._

The note was written with the same fountain pen, but not as hastily as the address label. No splatters and the lines at the beginning were dried before they could be blotted. The words themselves were meaningless, but the intent behind them unsettled me. There was no way Cobblepot would give up this easily.

I dug through the tissue paper and pulled out the contents. It was a crystal sculpture of an emperor penguin on a black granite pedestal. It was about a foot to 15 inches tall and weighed about five pounds. An odd gift, but the man did like birds.

It may have been my woman's intuition or honed scientific senses that weren't quite sure what they had picked up on, but a second reading of the note made me put the penguin back in the box, collect all the wrappings and the note, and march quickly to the elevator.

"Mrs. Miller, what floor is the security office on?" I asked as I walked.

"First floor," she replied, coming after me. "But take Mr. Wayne's elevator. It will take you directly there."

"He has his own elevator?"

She redirected me to the elevator concealed behind a bookcase in his office. "Do I need to evacuate the floor?" she asked me.

"No. It's probably nothing, but I wouldn't put it past Mr. Cobblepot to have put something nasty in here." The doors closed on her face and I was hurtled down to the security offices.

20 seconds later, I stepped out of the elevator feeling just slightly queasy. Fast elevators make me sick. I ignored my churning stomach and hurried to the first security officer I saw. "Mr. Wayne just received this penguin and I don't like the looks of it," I said, slamming the package down on the desk.

The security officer gave me an odd look between the package and me. "Just because it's ugly does not mean it's a security risk."

I rolled my eyes. "It's from Oswald Cobblepot. Please just take a look at it."

That name did the trick. "Alright, we'll check for threats. The post office does scan for explosives and biological weapons."

"So you'll do one better than the post office!" I replied, just a tad exasperated. I turned and stalked out of the office, intending to use the regular elevators now that I had delivered the threat. Unfortunately, I didn't get that far.

There was a massive _BANG!_ and a surge of heat. Then I flew.

When I came to, my ears were ringing. My first breath drew in a lung-full of plaster dust and I choked. I pushed myself away from the dust on the floor, but it was everywhere. I looked around, but that simple act gave me a huge headache. There was broken wood, sheetrock, and marble thrown everywhere around me. It felt warm. Too warm. I looked behind me and the security office I just left was in flames.

Apart from the ringing, it was silent. Absolutely, deathly silent. No crackle from the flames, no alarms going off, no screams of pain from survivors. The blast had completely deafened me.

I struggled to my feet and used a fallen beam from the ceiling to support me. My shoes had stayed on my feet, but my pumps weren't great for walking over debris. Still, I kept them on and walked towards the destroyed security office. I felt a wave of heat wash over me as I stepped through what should have been the door.

I spotted an oddly shaped pile of debris burning. On closer inspection, it was an unconscious man on fire. I shrugged off my blazer and used it to beat the flames until they died, then turned him over onto his back to check his pulse. I couldn't look at his face. It was half burned away and blackened, and the other half was crushed. His neck wasn't damaged nearly as bad, but it was raw. There was no pulse.

I reeled away from the corpse. I'd never been so close to death before and just the thought of this security guard never breathing again ... I had to move on. I left my blazer covering his face, or what was left of it.

The heat was still unbearable and the flames seemed to bite my bare arms. I stepped carefully past more debris, keeping my eyes peeled for any more security guards – survivors preferably. There was a shattered desk to avoid here, broken glass from a smashed computer screen there, and fallen cubicle walls thrown every which way. I stopped to lift up one wall that wasn't on fire, but no one was there. I couldn't waste time on each piece of wall, so I continued looking.

There was a crater where the crystal penguin should have been. For twenty feet, the blast cleared away everything in its path. Did I do this? Did I kill that man?

No. Oswald Cobblepot did all this. And if I had left the package on Mr. Wayne's desk, he would have been killed too, along with everyone else upstairs.

A hand shot out and grabbed my ankle. I nearly tripped in surprise. It was black with soot and its owner was hidden by a cubicle wall, a pile of debris, and a support beam from the ceiling. I grabbed the heaviest piece and dragged it away since it was pinning him down. He pushed some debris off his head, but was incapable of moving any more.

I dropped my piece and grabbed the wall to lift it off him. It was weighted down with wood and the plaster and the like, but I'm not complaining. This was probably the wall that saved his life. The man I found underneath was lying face-down. He seemed uninjured, or at least not bleeding profusely and had all his limbs intact. He rolled over, away from the wall, and kept rolling until I could safely set the wall down.

In the flickering light, I could see his face, but my eyes couldn't focus on details. I could tell he was between 25 and 30 years old, Asian – possibly Korean – and he was talking. He didn't seem like he could walk on his own, and he was dazed, so I took one of his arms over my shoulders and pulled him to his feet. Then we started to slowly make our way back to the lobby.

Several feet from the safety of the lobby, I noticed that a few men were flying past me. They were massive and intent on fighting the flames. It wasn't until one of them stopped me and took the man I was carrying that I realized they were firefighters. He talked to my injured security guard and looked back the way we came before sending one of his men in that direction. He had been trying to tell me that there was someone else.

I followed the firefighter back into the lobby where everyone was running through to get out. It was an organized panic. The fire alarm had been set off, evidenced by the sprinklers running and adding to the mess. I tried to stop for a moment at the reception desk, but someone grabbed my arm and pulled me to my feet, then the crowd dragged me along to the doors and into the plaza. There the crowd let me go and I could sit on the cement ledge of a fountain that was still running.

From my prime spot, I could watch the officials take control of the situation. The police were questioning witnesses that escaped the building alive, the paramedics were loading the wounded and injured into ambulances, and the firefighters organized search efforts and firefighting in general. There were police barriers around the plaza keeping the spectators out and witnesses in. A crowd was starting to form around Wayne Enterprises, trying to see what was going on. There were even a couple news vans that arrived after about 15 minutes. I have no idea how they would have heard about it. Probably police scanners.

It took me a while to process the fact that the man I work for had been attacked. And in turn, I had been put in the direct line of fire. This was probably a one time only thing, but catching bombs was not part of the job description. Could I afford to keep coming back here to work?

Someone waved a hand in front of my face to get my attention. It was Mr. Wayne looking very worried, accompanied by his butler, Alfred, and Police Commissioner Gordon. I could tell he was saying, "Jenny," but I couldn't even hear the ringing anymore.

"I'm sorry, the blast deafened me and I can't lip-read. Communication is going to be difficult." I was careful to speak normally because I couldn't hear myself speak. That statement alone made Gordon very interested and Mr. Wayne even more shocked. I might as well have told them that I had been right next to the bomb.

The two of them discussed something for a few moments before Commissioner Gordon gave up and Mr. Wayne gave him a phone number and some information from his phone. Then the Commissioner started to leave. He was not going to question me just yet. This could not happen.

"Where are you going?" I shouted. "I know who did this!"

He stopped and turned around, giving me a look that said, "By all means, tell me."

"Mr. Wayne got a package from Oswald Cobblepot this morning and the note that came with it sounded suspicious, so I took it downstairs to security. When I left …" I gestured to the mess of a building.

Gordon wrote something on his notepad and turned it to me. _What did the note say?_

"I don't know exactly. It just … had this threatening undertone to it. I can't explain it."

_Where is the note now?_

"With the package," I said through gritted teeth. "It was a crystal penguin on a black stone base," I said before he could ask. "It was about so high," I showed him with my hands, "and it completely filled the box. Nothing else could have fit in there."

 _Thank you_. He handed me a card with his contact information. _If you have any questions_ , he had written on it, _or remember anything else._

"Will do," I replied. "Thank you, Commissioner."

Mr. Wayne and his butler had a few words, taking advantage of my deafness, and the Commissioner went back to his radio and whatever else needed to be taken care of. I resumed my seat and put my head in my hands, suddenly exhausted. There was absolutely nothing left I could do or so, no more responsibilities on my shoulders, and my body gave into that comfort.

* * *

"Master Bruce!" said Alfred, throwing open the curtains. "You're needed at Wayne Tower!"

"It's not even noon," he moaned, burying his head in the pillows.

"There's an emergency, big enough to evacuate the entire building." He threw a pair of pants at him.

Bruce was already out of bed fast enough to catch them. "How bad is it?"

"That's what we're going to find out. Breakfast will be in the car."

Somehow Bruce managed to get dressed on his way downstairs and to the car, leaving the smaller things like tying his tie and combing his hair for the ride over. Eating was the last thing on his mind. "What kind of emergency is it?" he asked as Alfred started the car and peeled out of the driveway.

"Can't say for sure, but the fire brigade is apparently on the scene."

Several possible kinds of attacks were scratched off his mental list. "Ambulances?"

"Oh, yes."

"Who did you hear this from?"

"Mrs. Miller. All I got from her was that there was a fire, smoke was filling the building, and there are ambulances all over the place. Oh, and she's pretty sure the police are there too."

"They've gotten faster since the Joker." He straightened the haphazard knot in his tie, then gave up on it completely and pulled it off. He was nearly knocked over when Alfred took an especially tight turn. They shaved off more than a few minutes of their usual time and broke nearly as many traffic laws to get to the plaza at Wayne Tower.

Alfred parked as close to the police tape as he could get without running anyone over. Bruce didn't wait for him to open his door, and headed straight for the tower. He ducked under the police tape and stopped partly because the fire chief was yelling at him to get away, and partly because of the state of the building. Black smoke was billowing out of the shattered windows on the first floor and the main entrance where people were pouring out by the scattered handfuls. Some were being carried out on stretchers to the ambulances. Others were injured, but able to walk to help. Even more were just running to get away from the fire, but had no idea what to do once they were out. These the police were trying to clear out of the area.

Ignoring the fire chief, Bruce crossed the plaza to reach Commissioner Gordon who was talking to a few of his men. "What happened?" he demanded as soon as he was within earshot.

Gordon sent his men off before he would answer. "We're not sure. At this point, we know it's a fire. The fire department hasn't given us the go-ahead to investigate."

"It looks like a bomb went off," said Alfred, having just caught up.

"From what we've been able to gather," Gordon replied, "there was definitely a massive explosion, but it looks like the integrity of the building will hold."

"When will they let you in?"

He shook his head. "They just barely called in the second alarm, and they have to go through the entire place to make sure every fire is out. It will be a couple hours at least. Right now, I'm essentially crowd control."

Another fire truck arrived on the scene and nearly drowned everyone out with its siren until it shut off. Gordon spoke to someone on his radio, and Bruce surveyed the crowd for anyone he knew. Several were familiar, people he had passed every day, but no one he knew personally. Then he saw a woman with long blonde hair and dressed in a brown skirt and tan sleeveless blouse, stumble out of the main entrance. It was Jenny Harkness, covered in soot, cut and scraped all over, and her hair was a neat haystack on top her head, like it had been thrown around when a bomb went off. She had a hollow, confused look as she wobbled across the plaza and took a seat on the ledge of the fountain that was surprisingly still running.

Jenny worked upstairs on the top floors, or she would have been when the bomb went off. Which begged the question of what she was doing down here. "Jenny!" he called. "Jenny! Ms. Harkness!" She didn't respond, so he approached her, continuing to call her name. Even when he was five feet from her, she didn't react.

"It's no good; she's completely deaf," said Alfred.

"Or in shock," said Gordon, who had happened to follow them.

Bruce waved a hand in front of her face and she jumped in surprise. "Jenny, are you alright?" he asked.

"I'm sorry," she said, a little too loudly, "the blast deafened me and I can't lip read. Communication is going to be difficult."

"She must have been right there when it went off," Alfred said.

"Meaning she's the best eye-witness we've got," Gordon concluded. "I'll question her later after she's gotten some medical attention and gets her hearing back."

Bruce pulled out a notepad and his phone, copying Jenny's information down to give to Gordon. "I'll see that she gets to a hospital."

"Good." Gordon went back to his radio and was about to return to his men. At the sight of this, Jenny panicked.

"Where are you going?" she yelled. "I know who did this!"

He stopped and faced her. "If this was a deliberate attack, I need to know."

She took a breath and started quieter this time, but just as intense. "Mr. Wayne got a package from Oswald Cobblepot this morning and the note that came with it sounded suspicious, so I took it downstairs to security. When I left …" She gestured to the smoking, smoldering building.

"You're a lucky man, Mr. Wayne," Gordon said as he wrote something on his notepad and showed it to Jenny.

"I don't know exactly," she said. "It just … had this threatening undertone to it. I can't explain it." He wrote something else, and she clenched her jaw. "With the package. It was a crystal penguin on a black stone base. It was about so high," she said, gesturing its size with shaking hands, "and it completely filled the box. Nothing else could have fit in there."

"A crystal penguin," said Alfred. "That's an odd explosive."

"But not unheard of," Bruce replied. "Wayne Enterprises worked on something like it before, but abandoned the project because we couldn't find a way to make the material stable. Maybe someone else figured it out."

"Well now we'll know what to look for." Gordon handed Jenny his card with a couple notes on it.

"Will do," she said. "Thank you, Commissioner."

He finally went back to his men to discuss the new situation and Jenny relaxed visibly. "He's not even trying to hide it anymore," said Bruce. "Cobblepot might as well just tell the police he's the Penguin."

"Except the evidence was just destroyed," Alfred reminded him.

Jenny realized she wasn't needed anymore and resumed her seat, putting her head in her hands.

"But he left one witness alive. If only she had kept that note."

"She wasn't expecting it to blow up."

"Why would the Penguin be trying to kill me? Apart from my denying him a lucrative business opportunity."

"He might not be. He offered Ms. Harkness a job if she would dig up blackmail material, but she turned him down and turned him out of the house. She's the one who actually humiliated him the most."

"I'll have to keep an eye on her, then. Or even better, just take down the Penguin by the end of the week." Bruce stood Jenny up and led her away with one arm around her shoulders to the ambulances. She was about to become a difficult one to kill.

"Mr. Wayne," she said when the paramedics claimed her, "I think I'm going to take the rest of the week off."

"That's fi-"

"And since I can't hear you, I'm going to assume you said yes."


	9. Chapter Eight

Crashing Bruce Wayne's party is one thing. Trying to blow up Wayne Tower is another. However, both will ensure that the culprit receives the full wrath Batman. First things first, though. He needed to get rid of his muscle.

Ever since Solomon Grundy arrived, the Red Triangle gang hadn't become particularly brave or foolhardy, meaning they were saving him for when it really mattered. Robbing American National Bank would be a job he was needed for. It was a long shot, but it was the only lead Batman was able to get from the Cobblepot residence apart from the list of names and the chemical formulas. The Penguin was smart enough to abandon his plans when he noticed anything was compromised, and there was no way he didn't notice an empty safe and a fireplace full of ashes. That and the fact that Grundy, Batman and Tex destroyed his house and upset his birds.

Still, Grundy's addition to the team could have made Penguin arrogant, and after the attack on his home, he would be extremely angry. He wouldn't be thinking clearly, so the police had been alerted. They watched the bank all week. Nothing happened Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and most of Sunday. Then on Sunday evening, eight armored trucks pulled up and surrounded the building. For a few moments, the street was silent as the police waited for them to make a move.

Right at eight o'clock, the Red Triangle gang spilled out of the vehicles and ran into the bank. Each of them were dressed in black coats and sweaters, and wore white plastic masks with a red triangle painted somewhere on the face. Grundy himself stepped out of the largest one, nearly tipping it off balance. A mask would have been useless to disguise his identity. It only took the gang a moment to break open the doors and swarm inside. The police outside waited for the armored vehicles to be sparsely guarded and for the signal to come from the team inside the bank.

Batman waited inside for Penguin's men to fill the bank before he would make his move. One of their specialized members immediately went to the vault to pry it open. They had the best code-cracker Gotham had ever known. He had to lift his mask up a bit to work on the security, and Batman immediately recognized him. Matthew DeLaney had been jailed twice, but had always managed to break out. This time, the police swore to weld the locks shut. He got to work on the locks while the others shut off the alarms. Not that turning off the alarms would do them any good. Grundy approached DeLaney a few moments after he started. "How much longer?" he said impatiently.

"Just give me a couple minutes," DeLaney replied.

"We don't have a couple minutes."

DeLaney's code went through and the vault unlocked audibly. "And done," he declared.

Grundy swung the massive door open with barely any effort and stepped inside to collect the cash. He was followed by DeLaney, an extra goon to help with lifting, and Batman who dropped a smoke bomb and pulled the vault door closed. Delaney and his assistant immediately panicked and drew their guns. "This wasn't in the plans."

"No," Grundy growled. "He's here."

The smoke was getting so thick, the three men were practically swimming in it. They could barely see their hands in front of their faces, nor could they see each other. Unconsciously, they bumped into each other and stayed together, watching the other's back as if that was going to make a difference. Grundy had the best advantage since he could see over the smoke, but even that was filling up in the small room, and he had no idea where anyone was, whether they were his allies or Batman.

After a few moments of wandering around, Grundy couldn't even see the walls anymore. His arms swung out wildly, blindly trying to find his way around the room while he choked on the acrid smoke. Batman moved slowly and crouched down, careful to keep the smoke from giving his location away. Not that Grundy could have seen any distinct disturbances in the smoke's path since it was stinging his eyes. He was starting to get more frantic when he couldn't find his companions. "Come out, come out wherever you are," he growled at the Bat.

But Batman had no intentions of revealing his location. Instead, he took a tranquilizer dart off his utility belt, crept up between the two smaller men, and eased them apart, each still thinking they were next to their partner. A hand over one mans mouth, a needle in his neck, and the man fell to the ground without a sound. He dragged the man to the corner of the room so no one would trip over him. Then he did the same to DeLaney, keeping his flailing arms away as he panicked and then subsided into a drug induced sleep.

Somehow, Grundy could sense that his compatriots were out of the game. His movements became more erratic and panicked as he tried to wave the smoke away and sniff at the air for any strange scents. Batman fell in time with his steps, following him as he spun around and staying only a breath away. As he kept up, he took a syringe off of his belt with a tranquilizer three times as strong as the other darts. Hopefully it would be enough to take down the behemoth, but not too much so he wouldn't be killed. The right moment came when Grundy paused long enough for Batman to grab his shoulder and plunge the needle into his neck. Unfortunately, this, he noticed.

Grundy panicked and swatted Batman across the room into the wall of safe deposit boxes. Thankfully, he managed to brace himself for impact and kick himself off the wall before Grundy's fist destroyed several of the drawers where Batman's head used to be.

Grundy's strength was in his height and far reach. (And in his massive muscles, but that was needless to say.) So long as Batman kept to the ground, below his standard grab area, he would be able to avoid getting caught. Bending down would put him at a disadvantage. That, and the room was still filled with acrid smoke. Grundy tried sweeping through the mist, but he just kept missing the elusive shadow, even in a room as small as this one. Batman didn't have to win this fight. He just had to get away.

Batman slipped out the vault door after dropping another gas bomb designed to knock out three large men, and pushed it closed. He almost didn't notice the fight going on behind him until a white-masked man was thrown into the door as he was desperately trying to lock it. The person responsible for the man's introduction to flight was none other than Tex, who only paused long enough to wave before she dropped to the ground and kicked another thief's feet out from under him.

"What are you doing here?" he demanded.

" _What are_ _you_ _doing here?"_ she countered. " _I don't see you helping_."

Grundy rammed into the door, pushing it open six inches. Batman managed to shut it again before Grundy gave it another go. "You should go."

Tex threw an elbow into a man's face, cracking his mask and breaking his nose. Then she threw him over her shoulder into a nearby wall. " _Can't right now."_

Another blow echoed through the building. "I can't hold him in here for much longer.

Tex stopped fighting to briefly examine the situation. " _Let him out. He'll only get worse._ "

"Then start running."

" _Why? He's not after me... Right. Because you say so._ " Even Tex couldn't withstand the wrath of Batman's glare. She took off running. Batman tossed her a grenade so she could make an impromptu back door should the need arise. She caught it deftly, and a moment later she was gone.

Grundy gave the door one last try, and it flew open. He spotted a black cape disappearing around a corner. "Get back here! I'm not done with you!" he snarled as he charged after the vigilante. The police that had flooded the building may have tried to stop him, but Grundy swept them away and they couldn't afford to go after him.

Batman found the door Tex used: an employee side door with a broken lock. Unfortunately, she had chosen the path of worst-escape-route, straight through the police line of defense. How had they not noticed her running right past them? The answer came to him in the form of a pillar collapsing behind him as Grundy threw open front door, then burst through the frame when it wasn't big enough. They had more important things to worry about than a couple annoying vigilantes.

He shot his grappling hook at the building next door and flew over the crowd of policemen and Red Triangle members being hauled into police cars. Most everyone below didn't notice him at all. Grundy, however, did. Within moments, he was tearing through the mass of cars and the small group of bystanders that had gathered behind the police tape, literally throwing people out of his way. The crowd was quick to scatter.

Even though Tex had a head start and was a surprisingly fast sprinter, she was having a hard time keeping up with Batman and Grundy's pace, and Batman soon overtook her. Then Grundy passed Tex, who stopped in her tracks to catch her breath, and probably thought: _Why am I running?_ Batman continued on foot to keep Grundy distracted, or at least focused on him instead of Tex. No doubt he would have some karmic rage pent up for her. The plan, whatever it was, seemed to being going well.

Until Batman realized that they were headed for a particularly crowded part of town, specifically, a movie theatre. It wasn't opening night for any blockbusters, but people still wanted to see the shows. He stopped to see where Grundy was at, only to realize the both of them were in the middle of traffic. The cars avoided Batman well enough for the most part. Not so much for Grundy. He seemed to be slowing down, and the cars were piling up around him. So instead of walking around them, he picked up one car by the bumper and moved it aside like a life-size cardboard replica. Then he punched his fist through the engine of another one that failed to slow down enough for him, and his elbow clipped a passing scooter, sending it spinning into the sidewalk.

" _Hey Grundy!_ " Tex's voice was amplified ten times over the sound of the traffic. She was also standing on the hood of a car several yards behind him, and waving at him. " _Remember me?_ "

Grundy's attention shifted from Batman to the figure behind him. His face twitched where she had burned him with the log, and he turned to face her. "Little Sparrow," he snarled. "I'll crush your bones between my teeth!" His feet picked up speed, but at a slower pace than before. Maybe the tranquilizer was finally taking effect.

" _You'll have to catch me first._ " Tex darted into an alley that was still slightly populated, but small enough that Grundy had to slow down. Batman shot his grappling cable onto a roof and followed them above the alley. Fewer obstructions that way.

He caught up with Tex, so to speak, and scouted ahead for any escape. "Construction yard ahead." She gave him a signal that said she understood, and he went on past her. At the sight of the Batman, most people in the alley cleared out for fear of getting caught and/or killed. Their guilty consciences also may have been to blame. This left Tex with far fewer people to trip over or run into, and Grundy with nearly no one to throw into walls and kill. However, it made it easier for Grundy to catch up.

The alley ended at a street, and across the road was the construction yard that had cleared out for the weekend. Batman swung over the road, cleared the fence, and landed on a pile of steel I beams. Tex managed to run across the street without getting hit and climbed the fence. Climbing up was easy enough. Trying to jump down resulted in an unintentional somersault and landing on her face. Batman nearly hid his face in embarrassment. _This_ was what he had to work with. A clumsy vigilante.

Tex scrambled to her feet and caught up with Batman again. She must have caught his previous look of shame. " _Dude_ ," she said in her usual volume. " _It happens._ "

Tire squealed, a couple cars honked, and metal crashed against brick and glass. Grundy was crossing the street and he did not bother to look both ways. And he was moments away from tearing the fence to pieces and coming after Tex and Batman.

" _Now what?_ "

"We climb."

The building they were about to conquer was a steel skeleton of a six story building. The top two floors hung over the edge and were supported by three I beams partially covered in concrete casing which would become future pillars. The rest of the building, although bare wall-wise, was filled with various construction equipment. " _Okay,_ " said Tex, rolling her shoulders, getting ready to make the climb. " _I can do this._ "

Instead, Batman wrapped an arm around her waist and aimed his grappling gun at the top floor. "Hold on." She was quick to put her arms around his neck before he shot the gun and they flew up.

" _Cheater_ ," she mock chided.

"Pragmatist," he corrected.

They stopped at the fifth floor. The wind ran through the structure, threatening to knock them off. Grundy made it through the yard and shouted curses at the pair in the building that he could not reach. " _So, are the police coming?_ "

"Eventually."

" _That's comforting. Do you think he can climb?_ "

"Normally." They watched Grundy attempt to scale a ladder, but it collapsed under his weight. Then he tried the iron bar that constituted the second floor, but could not pull himself up. "Not tonight."

Tex took a seat on the beam they were standing on, letting her feet dangle. " _This is entertaining_."

Batman crouched next to her, letting his cape hang free and flutter and snap in the wind. "In a cruel way."

" _What did you do to him, exactly?_ "

"I drugged him. Quite a bit."

" _Huh? Oh, hang on. I'm deaf on that side._ " Tex stood up and carefully stepped around Batman and seated herself on his left side. He was surprised she managed to survive. " _What did you say_?"

"How did you lose your hearing?"

" _A bomb went off and I was too close. I used to be deaf in both. Now it's just the one._ "

"I see," he replied neutrally. Not too many people can say they were deafened by an explosion.

" _So, Grundy. Why's he gone nuts?_ "

"I gave him a strong tranquilizer, but it doesn't seem to have kicked in yet. I'm surprised he's made it this far."

" _He is a strong guy, I'll give him that. But he's not too bright. What do we actually know about him?_ "

The files he had researched earlier popped into memory like he was opening a document on a computer. "Solomon Grundy came into existence about twenty years ago when he was arrested for vagrancy. He claims not to have any memory before that, except that he was born on Monday. Since then, he's been in and out of prison for violent crimes, burglary, and a possible connection to a murder. He's a known hired hand for any number of gangs and mobs."

" _He kind of reminds me of Lennie._ " She saw the glance he gave her out of the corner of his eye. " _Yes, I went to high school. I read_ Of Mice and Men _just like everyone else. I don't know if Grundy's autistic, but I don't think he knows exactly how strong he is sometimes. And with the Penguin, he's been given an outlet where being violent is acceptable._ "

"If that's the case, he still has to be taken to jail. It's probably the only place he can get the help he needs."

" _What, like all the other times before? What will make Blackgate prison any different?_ "

"If Grundy's mentally unfit, then he'll go to Arkham Asylum. And he will be helped, but not before the police take him. The tranquilizer isn't working as fast as I had anticipated. I was hoping his run through town would exacerbate his condition, but if this continues, I'll have to give him another dose."

" _Don't risk it. You could kill him. I can wear him out some more if you want._ " _  
_

He shook his head. "Give him a few more minutes."

Grundy attempted to shimmy up a diagonal cross-beam, and earned a sore head as a result. His steps seemed to be taking zig-zag directions instead of a straight line and his eyes were having a hard time staying open. " _This still amusing?_ "

"Possibly. You?"

She nodded. " _We are terrible people._ "

"He threw us through a wall. I don't feel that guilty."

" _How long until he figures out he can use the stairs?_ "

"What stairs?" He scanned the construction site again, looking for ways up.

" _Stairs, scaffolding. There's always something_."

"Hopefully longer than it takes the police to get here."

But this was not to be. Right then, Grundy noticed some temporary stairs that led up to the roof. Batman's plan was to wait until he got to the fifth floor and then they would ride the grapple down to the ground. Not a bad plan. They stood up and balanced on a beam to wait for the right moment. Except they forgot to take into account the building wasn't structurally sound just yet. They could feel the vibrations of Grundy's steps on the stairs. When Grundy finally got to the fourth floor, he stopped, found a metal pipe laying around, and swung it at one of the building's supports.

Batman managed to maintain his balance, but Tex wasn't so lucky. He tried to catch her hand, but missed and Tex fell to the third floor where she managed to grab hold of one of the beams. Grundy leaped down to the floor below, shaking it so bad that she nearly let go. There was scratching like metal on metal as she scrambled to keep her grip. " _Batman? Help?_ " she said calmly as she watched Grundy approach her with his pipe brandished. Grundy swung and hit her fingers with a few resounding _thwack_ s, but she refused to let go. It wasn't until he started pushing her hands off with one massive booted foot that her hold started to slip.

It also helped that Batman swung in from behind and kicked Grundy in the back of the head, sending him plummeting down three stories into a pile of orange traffic cones. He rolled out of the pile with his eyes closed and muttering something about falling ill on Thursday. As Tex and Batman readied for another go with Grundy, the construction yard filled with sirens and red and blue flashing lights. "Right on time," Batman said appreciatively.

" _Why is there always a big, heavy metal pipe laying around_?" she whined as he grabbed her wrists and lifted her back onto the beam. She bent backwards and forwards with her arms stuck out awkwardly as she found her balance again.

Batman bit back a reply about how metal beams and pipes were to be expected in construction sites when he noticed the scratches and gouges in the beam at his feet. "Let me see your hands."

" _I think we need to get out of here now_ ," she replied, trying to change the subject.

" **Tex. Hands. Now.** " She again received the wrath of Batman's full glare and meekly held out her hands for him to examine. He took both of them and looked them over thoroughly. Not a cut, not a scratch, not a bruise, not a single burst knuckle or broken nail. Her silver nail polish wasn't even chipped. In fact, there were metal shavings under her nails. "Your fingers aren't broken," he concluded.

" _That's good news. Can we go?_ "

"But they should be. How do you do it?"

Tex turned her head to the ever growing crowd of policemen. " _Tell you what. If we leave now, I swear to tell you later_."

"I will hold you to that."

Just so he wouldn't lose her, he took her by the wrist and led her through the building and carried her down to the ground level. They escaped through the back of the construction yard and over the fence. Tex, again - " _Ouch!_ " As was to be expected. Batman stopped to help her to her feet, but when he turned, she had vanished into the night.

* * *

Alfred found Bruce working on a project on the computers in the cave below his mansion. It seemed to consist of a preponderance of squiggly lines and miniature recording equipment. "Any success tonight?" he asked as he set down the morning's newspaper.

"Grundy was taken into police custody."

"That's good."

"Penguin will probably have him broken out or have the charges dropped by morning."

"Not so good."

"But now Penguin knows his biggest weapon is an exploitable weak spot and probably won't use him as much."

"I assume that's a good thing."

Bruce shrugged and went back to what he was working on. " _What like all the other times before - What like all the other times - What like all the other times before -_ " The voice from the computer went higher and lower, fluctuating between a tenor and a base speaking male. Bruce sighed in frustration. So much work, and this was the comical result.

"What's this?"

"A recording I took of Tex," Bruce explained. "I'm hoping it will confirm a suspicion I have of her."

"That she's secretly a male?"

" _We are terrible people_..." The voice shot up several octaves, too far to be recognizable.

"They were both deafened by a bomb blast, they both compared Penguin to Charles Augustus Milverton, a somewhat obscure reference, and both knew about the blackmail."

He made a few more adjustments and played the result. "A bomb went off and I was too close," a woman's voice said from the computer.

"I know that voice," said Alfred. "I've heard it before, but I'm not sure where."

"You talked to her at the housewarming party right before you kicked Cobblepot out."

"We are terrible people," the voice continued.

"That's … Jenny Harkness," Alfred said incredulously.

"Or sounds a lot like her. It's not a perfect science. And I have to keep in mind that I'm slightly biased towards the outcome. Still."

"Very convincing, though."


	10. Chapter Nine

Thank goodness my mother demanded I get a plan with unlimited texting. For the last week and a half, this feature has been a life saver. I was starting to love it as much as she does.

Most of my hearing had come back. There was still a little bit of ringing in my left ear, but I could usually ignore it. I was even starting to answer phone calls even though I missed half the conversation. Old habits die hard.

Since I was no use to Mr. Wayne, I stayed at home until I could hear well enough to carry on an intelligible conversation. He was fine with this because he was busy enough trying to get Wayne Tower repaired as quickly as possible. I attended three funerals for the three people killed in the blast: two security guards, and a businesswoman. I thought they would appreciate my presence even if I couldn't hear or communicate. I also made a recording of the proceedings so I could listen later.

It was on one of these vacation days that I received a letter in my mailbox. I recognized the paper and the handwriting immediately. Thick, expensive paper for both the envelope and the letter, and the ink was from a fountain pen. Marks from the post office were curiously absent, as was a return address. The only thing on the front was "Jenny Harkness" and my apartment building's address. The letter was placed on top of my usual pile of junk mail, not inside the folded stack with the rest of my postcards, meaning it was placed on top. I checked the back of the mailbox where the mailman usually gets in. The lock had a few faint scratches where someone picked the lock and found my mail with my name, and left the letter there.

This is bad.

* * *

"You have to tell the police!" Imogen exclaimed, waving her scissors in my face.

"No, I can't. This isn't evidence of any criminal activity, and it's can't even be construed as a threat. What am I supposed to tell them?"

"That he sent a bomb to your office and now he's gloating about it. Of course it's a threat, Jenny! He's practically telling you he knows where you live and he can come kill you any time."

"Cobblepot wouldn't do that."

"No. He'd send another bomb instead."

"The only thing the police can charge him with is breaking into my mailbox to give me an invitation, and you know how tough the Post Office is on those sorts of criminals. He'll be locked up for years."

"They got Al Capone on a tax evasion charge."

"This is true, but going through my mail isn't nearly as severe. Trust me, Imogen. I've thought about this every which way. I need to go."

"Go where?" Imogen's client asked, thoroughly annoyed. Imogen got back to working on her layers and bangs.

"The Iceberg Lounge. Ever heard of it?" I asked.

"Sure. Who hasn't? Anybody who's anybody knows about the Lounge," she scoffed.

"What can you tell me about it?"

"Only that it's super-exclusive. The only way you know you're someone is this town is if you make it through the doors of the Iceberg Lounge."

"So you've never been in," I concluded. The client gasped in offence, but I ignored her and continued talking to Imogen. "That's why I have go. The police are never going to have this kind of a chance."

"And what happens if something goes wrong?"

"Well, you know where I'll be tomorrow night at nine. If you don't hear from me, be a dear, report me missing and testify at his trial, will you? Thanks."

* * *

I called the number on the back of the card to RSVP. I also needed a place to park downtown. Parking downtown is worse than the invention of reality TV and chewing on tin foil, as I found out the hard way a year ago. I figured that if Cobblepot was giving me a VIP pass, then he could save a parking spot for me. I was overjoyed when someone other than Cobblepot answered the phone. "Iceberg Lounge. This is Kevin," said a young man on the other end.

"Kevin. This is Jenny Harkness. I just got my invitation, and I was wondering if you could do me a favor."

"Ms. … Ms. Harkness?" His voice was suddenly full of fear. "What can I do for you?"

"I need a place to park tomorrow. Do you think you could reserve me a place?"

"Mr. Cobblepot has offered to pick you up in his personal limousine."

"Sorry, Kevin, that just won't do. I need to drive there or I can't go at all." His pause was unnecessarily long. "Kevin? Are you still there?"

"I apologize, but all of our reserved parking is taken." I sensed a bit of hope in that sentence.

"Kevin, what's wrong? What are you afraid of?"

It took him another few moments to whisper an answer. "You don't want to come."

"I don't? Why not?"

"They're going to kill you."

"That's why I need my car. Help me out here, Kevin."

He took a deep breath and replied professionally. "There is an underground parking lot on the south side of the building. Just show the parking attendants your pass."

"Thank you so much, Kevin."

Step one done. Step two, finding a dress. My least favorite part. Really, why do people keep thinking it's a good idea to invite me to parties? It isn't. It really isn't. Luckily, I had a cocktail dress left over from a winter formal a couple years ago. That was an … awkward blind date. My dress was white, with spaghetti-straps, an empire waist and a blue underskirt that ended at my knees. It was simple, easy to get on, and would probably let me run away should the need arise. Also, it was my favorite dress I've ever had.

Step two done. Step three, make sure Cobblepot would be blamed if I went missing for any reason. I've got at least one person who knows where I'll be, copies of the invitation from Cobblepot locked in my desk along with a letter explaining everything, and a note for the police should they search my apartment. I am ready.

* * *

I took very little with me that night. Just a medium length trench coat and a small clutch. They would most likely search me, so I didn't bother trying to arm myself. Not that there are many places to hide things in a cocktail dress. I straightened my hair, parted it on the side, and wore a black headband. I didn't need to call in Imogen and go all fancy for Cobblepot. She was refusing to take part in this anyway, calling it idiotic nonsense that would get me killed. I was hoping to avoid that last part.

There was a long line outside the building and three beefy security guards keeping them out. I recognized a few of them from Mr. Wayne's party. Even the elite of Gotham had to wait. Exclusive indeed. Almost absurdly so. I wonder if Bruce Wayne would even be allowed inside. I circled the block once to kill some time and definitely not because I missed the turn the first time, then pulled into the parking area.

I was stopped by an incredibly large man in a tuxedo, ex-marine, and signaled to roll down my window. I did so and flashed my invitation. "Mr. Cobblepot is expecting me," I told him. He moved a saddle-horse roadblock aside for me and let me park. There were maybe ten spots, and six had already been taken. There was one, however, labeled 'Jenny Harkness' on a temporary placard.

Instead of taking the back door into the VIP suite, I circled around to the front door and walked straight up to the bouncers. Several people jeered at me, a middle-class citizen, for trying to get in ahead of them. I handed them my invitation, and they compared it to the list and my driver's license. "Go on in, Ms. Harkness," one told me. The crowd gave a groan of disappointment as I stepped inside. They were in a better position than I was, ironically.

The Iceberg Lounge was surprisingly was darkened, but cozy, with plenty of tables and alcoves for private conversations and an area for a dance floor. The band was an incredibly talented one that switched between Jazz and soft contemporary choices effortlessly. There was an impressively well stocked bar with the most expensive booze I have ever encountered. The entire place was themed around ice. Nearly everything was made out of glass or colored blue. The waiters and waitresses wore blue and white suits with bow ties. In the room next to this one, I heard a splash of water, and not a small one, so I turned my coat over to the ushers at coat-check and went to investigate.

The next room was far more brightly lit and completely bare except for the railing. It was made of glass with metal on the edges of the panels, and went in a large circle and took up most of the room. It was nearly freezing in here, but no one seemed to mind. They were all watching whatever was in the ring. I was confused as to what they would be interested in, when a sea lion jumped into the air and landed with a splash down below. I had to see this for myself. The pool below was filled with ice, penguins, and two sea lions - one lounging on the ice, one swimming in the water. I couldn't help but laugh when I saw the penguins playing. I highly doubted this was legal, though. No wonder this place was so popular.

"Jenny?" said a gentleman on the far side of the room. It was James Carroll, dressed to the nines. He looked as surprised to see me as I was, but he was more excited and came around to see me. "I'm so happy to see you again! I realized when I dropped you off that I forgot to ask for your number."

I thought I had avoided this the last time we met, and he was one who liked to cut to the chase. I briefly pondered whether or not I should play deaf, but decided it couldn't hurt if I just gave it to him. "How have you been, James?" I said as I wrote my number down on a napkin.

"Just great. You know, I was thinking about you the other day. I've been following you in the paper."

"That's not creepy."

He chuckled a bit at that. "I can't believe someone would send a bomb to your office. Do you know who sent it?"

"I'm not really supposed to discuss the case right now. Forming theories before you have all the facts screws everything up, so I try not to speculate." Not that I needed to. I had all the facts, plus some.

"I see. So I guess you can't tell me what it was like saving all those lives."

"No." I absentmindedly watch a penguin take a spinning dive into the pool. "It didn't feel like I had. I thought it was my fault, that I had hurt all those people in the office. It was like I had stepped through a rabbit hole into another world." I sighed and regained my emotions. "Why am I telling you this? I didn't even tell Imogen. Sorry, I don't mean to be a killjoy."

"How about I buy you a drink?"

"Thanks, but alcohol is the last thing I need right now." I'm a terrible lightweight, and I needed all my senses tonight when I dealt with Oswald Cobblepot.

"I'm sure they've got soft drinks. Or water."

"You're sweet, but I'll have to take a rain check. I'm meeting someone tonight and he's expecting me soon."

James' face fell and he barely suppressed a scowl. "Who? A friend?"

"Not really. More like a business acquaintance. Well, I'm glad I got to see you tonight, James." I kissed his cheek and left the room, leaving him completely stunned. Yes, he's smitten with me. No, I don't feel guilty using that to exploit him.

In the other room, it wasn't hard to find the entrance to the VIP Lounge. On the other side of the room, one of the ushers stood at a podium with a short list. When someone was on it, he would remove the red velvet rope and let them go down the stairs. More often than not, they were turned away. In fact, they turned away Bruce Wayne – _the_ Bruce Wayne – and his girlfriend. "That is so unfair," Star grumbled.

"Not having much luck?" I teased as I approached them.

"Star thought they would let us in if we told them it was her birthday," Mr. Wayne explained.

"They called your bluff, I see. Well, you probably wouldn't have liked the company anyway."

"I'm surprised to see you here, Jenny," Star said. "I didn't think this was your sort of thing."

"It's not," I admitted, "but it's always good to give new things a try. Why not a nightclub?"

"So what's the verdict?" said Mr. Wayne.

"Surprisingly enjoyable. Have you seen the penguins yet?"

"They have penguins?" said an amazed Star. "Everything's better with penguins. Bruce, let's go see the penguins! This is the best unbirthday ever!" Star grabbed her boyfriend's arm and practically dragged him away. I waved to my boss as he stumbled backwards helplessly.

"They make a cute couple," I told the usher at the podium as I handed him my invitation.

"I didn't notice," he replied. There was an affirmative beep on his computer and he removed the rope for me. "Welcome to the Arctic Circle, Ms. Harkness. Mr. Cobblepot is waiting inside."

"Thank you, Kevin." I stepped past him onto the first step. This was where I could still go back. I looked back at Star and Mr. Wayne who were completely oblivious of the monster down below. As much as I wanted to escape with them, I knew I could not. I took another step. Then another, straight down into the underbelly.

* * *

"Bruce, did you see that?" said Star.

"See what?" His attention was still on the sea lions.

"Jenny. She looked terrified, just for a second."

He immediately sobered up and looked for his secretary. "Of what?"

"I don't know, but she looked scared right before she went downstairs."

"She said she doesn't do night clubs."

"Nervous is one thing. _That_ was terror."

"But there's nothing to be afraid of here." If only he wasn't lying. The only reason he had come tonight was because he thought he might be able to do a little investigating.

"Bruce. She found a bomb in your office, and not once did you say if she even looked afraid. Whatever's going on is something only she can detect, and it scares her more than that bomb. She knows she's walking into a trap."

"Then we need to call the police."

" _I'll_ call the police. You go see if you can find her."

The two of them split up, Star to the limo outside to call 911, and Bruce presumably to the Arctic Circle. Instead, he found a side door to a secluded back alley.

* * *

"Jenny! I'm so glad you could make it!" said Oswald Cobblepot in a voice that resembled Santa Clause. "Please, sit down." He offered me a chair at a two person table in the center of the small, chilly room. There was a candle and a plain white envelope on the table. There were five other people in the room: three men in blazers smoking cigars and playing poker, an Asian woman using a sizable knife to clean her nails, and another woman with long, incredibly curly white hair, cleaning a gun at a table with a poodle sitting beside her. There was some soft music coming from speakers in the walls. Our conversation would not be overheard by anyone except by everyone in this room. I set my purse down on the table and sat at the offered seat. "Can I get you anything to drink?" he asked. This room had its own private bar as well.

"No, thank you, Mr. Cobblepot –"

"Just call me Oswald. We're not proper folk here."

"Mr. Cobblepot. Why am I here?" I didn't want to stay here any longer than I had to.

"I don't know. You're the one who came. You tell me." When I wouldn't answer, he sat down across from me. "I'm in the market for new recruits."

"Then you're looking in the wrong place."

"I know people, Jenny. They can be broken down into a couple basic groups. There are the do-gooders who are incorruptible. They can't be bought, bullied, or persuaded from their golden path – usually police officers, vigilantes like Batman, and mothers. Doesn't matter what you tell them, they will always do what's right. Even if you threaten them, they won't do anything wrong. Then there are those who have price tags attached. They don't have set standards, and they'll do anything for the right price. Usually, it's money."

At that, he subtly pushed the envelope towards me.

"Or it could be power, a loved one held hostage, threats of jail-time – doesn't matter. They're self-centered, self-serving, always looking out for number one and extremely easy to manipulate. They're usually found in public office or selling drugs. They come a dime a dozen."

"Is that who they are?" I asked, indicating the others in the room. "Easy to pay off?"

"No. They're in the third group. They're smart, talented, and clever. These kinds of people are often mistaken for people in the first group. They won't do anything for the paycheck. And if they do get paid for a service, they won't do it for the money. They need something to do, something that challenges and excites them. _Those_ are the people I want. You are clever – too clever for a simple job at Wayne Enterprises. I'm offering you something better."

"What, exactly?"

"I've recently lost a large part of my crew in an unfortunate incident with the police at American National Bank. This is after my home was broken into and nearly destroyed. I need someone who can collect rumors and turn them into credible evidence, something I'm sure you're already doing."

"You want me collect blackmail. I'm sorry, Mr. Cobblepot, but my answer is no."

"You may say that now, but you're bored, Jenny. At some point, you'll realize you need more to do than Bruce Wayne's dirty laundry. You're already starting to feel it. That's why you came tonight. You could have ignored my invitation easily, but you needed to do something dangerous. Maybe you thought you could catch me doing something illegal. Maybe you thought you could have some fun. Either way, you're bored."

I let his words sink into me and I carefully considered his proposal. There was just one problem with this whole thing. "Do you know Sherlock Holmes?"

"Sure I do. Who doesn't?"

"No, you don't. Few people actually do. Sherlock Holmes is someone everyone knows of, but they've never actually read the books. There's this one story called "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton." A client, a debutante, hires Mr. Holmes to get some letters back from this man before her wedding. He is demanding 7000 pounds or he publishes them in the paper and her engagement is ruined. And you know he'll do it because he's done it several times before and ruined plenty of people. Of the 50 or so murderers Mr. Holmes has put away, Charles Augustus Milverton is by far the worst man in London he has ever had to deal with. Mr. Holmes tries to forcefully convince him to give the letters back or take only 2000 pounds, but it does no good. So, Mr. Holmes disguises himself as a plumber and works for Milverton. He befriends a servant, and proposes to her so he can learn about the layout of the house and so she will tie up the guard dog.

"As soon as he learns the location of his blackmail, he and Dr. Watson break in when he's supposed to be asleep. They manage to find his safe full of sensitive papers and Mr. Holmes cracks it open. However, they realize he's operating outside his schedule. He's actually awake and comes to wait for someone in his study. He thinks it's a maid that works for the Countess d'Albert, coming to deliver some incriminating letters. Milverton is wrong. She is actually a widow, whose life was ruined by Milverton. With nothing left to lose, she shoots him several times, grinds her heel in his dead face, and leaves. Mr. Holmes knew she was going to kill him, but he held Dr. Watson back from protecting Milverton, since this was justice that the courts of England couldn't comprehend. They let her get away. But instead of running away with just his client's letters, Mr. Holmes takes everything out of Milverton's safe and throws it into the fire. Again and again, he fills his arms with the papers and throws them into the fire until the safe is empty. By the time they get out of there, the alarm has been sounded, and they barely make an escape.

"Charles Augustus Milverton was by no means a stupid man looking for money. They payoff was part of the game. He got just as much out of bleeding the nobility of London as he did humiliating them publicly and ruining them completely. But Sherlock Holmes is a far more clever man. Should he ever turn to crime, he would be a force to be reckoned with. He does get bored just as easily as I do, but in this line of work, he can talk about whatever he does freely and brag about it, except, of course, for a bit of minor burglary. And there's never a shortage of crime. You see, Mr. Cobblepot, I do not intend to become Charles Augustus Milverton, doing the same thing over and over. That's just going to get boring. My sister thoroughly believes that I am descended from Sherlock Holmes himself, or at least Mr. Holmes incarnate. I'm not going to disappoint her by stooping to … _this_. My answer is no. It doesn't matter how bored I get, it will always be no because I've got better things to keep me occupied. Good night, Mr. Cobblepot." I put my purse over my shoulder and stood to leave.

"Burned everything in his safe, huh?" said Cobblepot. "That's kind of funny, because somebody broke into my house a couple weeks ago."

The men playing poker had stopped their game and were approaching me, backing me into the table. "What does this have to do with me?"

"They cracked my safe and burned everything I had on everyone."

"Seriously?"

The woman with the poodle had calmly gotten up and joined the men. All of a sudden, she lashed one hand out and jabbed me in the throat. My trachea snapped shut and I fell down at once, mostly in shock. My mouth gaped open, desperate to get in some air, but very little was coming. While I was trying with all my might to inhale, two of the men picked me up by my arms, pulled me to my feet, and dragged me towards a door.

The other woman opened the door to the private parking lot and led the other two men out to the back alley. I tried dragging my feet, or at least making it difficult for them to pull me along, but they were built like bricks and my resistance was nothing compared to their strength. I gave up on the notion of screaming moments before. I was lucky to even be breathing at this point. I didn't know what was going to happen, but I knew for a fact that I would not die in an alley, no matter what.

They stopped behind a dumpster, and she pulled the gun from the shoulder holster of the man on my right. It took her a second to unlock the safety and cock it. "Dump her at the docks," she told them as she aimed the gun at my head. I wanted to close my eyes and pretend none of this was happening, but if I was going to die, she was going to look me in the eye. By the looks of her, she wouldn't have felt much guilt anyway.

Suddenly, a figure appeared from the shadows. Just as she was about to pull the trigger, the newcomer grabbed her gun with one hand, and threw the other elbow into her face. Another blow to her abdomen sent her reeling. The other two men immediately dropped me to engage the stranger and assist their companion.

While I was coughing up a storm on the ground trying to get my breath back, the fight raged on behind me. My savior had a bit of a temper. There was no mercy in the beat-down offered. The three of them should have been enough to take down an army, but this one person was putting up such a fight that they were constantly being thrown down on the ground and hurled into the walls. I heard fingers snapping, and I know I saw the figure break the woman's arm just by twisting it.

It wasn't until the stranger was standing over the last man and punching him repeatedly in the face with bone-crunching blows that I knew the fight had to end. " _Stop it!_ " I gasped. " _You're going to … going to kill him!_ " Only when I pulled the stranger away with a weak grip did the pummeling stop.

I thought for sure that a dark figure in a seedy alley in Gotham City saving a girl from getting murdered by a psychotic loon's posse in the middle of the night had to be Batman. After all, that's what he does. But the size was wrong. And I knew that red-and-black suit too well. It couldn't be, but it had to be.

" _Jackie?_ "


	11. Chapter Ten

Batman was too late to save Jenny. Tex had gotten there first. However, it seemed that she had gotten herself into her own bit of peril.

" _Ow! Ow! Ouch! Jenny, would you – ow! – would you knock that off! Ow!_ "

"What! Are! You! Doing! In! Gotham?" Jenny punctuated each word with a whack of her purse at Jackie's head. "And take that stupid thing off!"

" _Okay! Ow!_ " Tex touched a spot on her collar and her red eyes faded to black glass. Then the ribbons of metal that made up her head peeled back starting with her chin, went over her face and the back of her head before disappearing into her collar. Her red eyes were replaced by bright green ones. A long red braid tumbled out of her jacket over her left shoulder now that it was free. The hair did a good job of hiding a bit of scarring on the left side of her face. "Better?"

"Much." Suddenly, Jenny lashed out and slapped her sister across the face.

Jackie barely even blinked. "Okay. I see that you're mad."

"Mad? You came to Gotham without telling me!" She would have been yelling had her trachea not been crushed several minutes ago.

"Can we talk about this later? Someone called the cops, and they're going to spook the Penguin."

"Who?"

"Oswald Cobblepot? The Moriarty of Gotham City?"

"He struck me more as a Milverton."

"Yeah, me too. Look, I've got to get you out of here. How did you get here?"

"My car. It's in the garage, if they haven't gotten rid of it yet."

"Okay, I'll take you there, but I have to go take care of things in the Iceberg." She wrapped an arm protectively around her sister and led her down to her car.

"Oh, I left my coat in there. Do you think you could grab it?"

"Sure. Jenny, did you actually have a plan when things went south back there?"

"I made sure several people knew where I was so Cobblepot would be convicted in the event of my murder. I could definitely get him on attempted murder now."

"Did you have a plan for _survival?_ "

"Well, I was hoping that they'd be smart enough not to kill me."

"Did you _tell_ them people had seen you?"

"No, I did not," she admitted as her plan unraveled before her ears. "Didn't quite get to that part before they shut me up."

"There's your problem. You assume people are smarter than they actually are."

"No I don't," she replied indignantly. "Most people are idiots."

"I would like to argue with you on that, but I'm short on time."

They arrived at Jenny's car, and she opened the door to get in. "Please don't get yourself killed."

"I'll be fine …" Jackie stiffened. "Did you hear something?"

"Yeah." Jenny pointedly looked past her shoulder.

Jackie slowly spun around and let out a "Bwah!" when she saw Batman hovering right above her head. "Don't do that!" she snapped. Jenny chuckled and sat down in the driver's seat. Jackie crossed her arms and attempted to out-glare the Dark Knight. She was failing miserably. "You scare people, you know that?"

"Do you prefer Tex or Jacqueline?" he growled. Not that he really wanted to know, and she knew that.

Jackie sighed and slumped her shoulders in defeat. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean for you to find out. It's just that Jenny doesn't like -" Batman brushed past her, cutting her off. He slipped through the door to the VIP rooms and left her hanging.

Inside the Arctic Circle, the Penguin was talking to what remained of his crew from the stage. "Ladies and Gentlemen," he announced, "I've decided that it's time for a vacation. Preferably somewhere out-of-state."

A murmur passed through the crowd of 10 or so mob members in the Arctic Circle. They were all seated around the tables, each with their weapons at the ready. "Does this have anything to do with the girl you just had us kill?" a man asked.

"A little bit, yes," he admitted.

"We're screwed, aren't we," said another man.

"A little bit, yes. Look, we've suffered a bit of a setback, nothing we can't handle."

"Then why don't we sit here and let our lawyers weather the storm?" a woman asked.

"Because even if the police have their hands tied," Penguin snapped, "Batman doesn't. We've been playing a dangerous game, and now he has the upper hand. We've got no choice but to clear out. What do you think of Havana?"

"Havana's not bad," said the woman with the poodle. Her voice was eerily deadpan, and her eyes never moved from her dog. Suddenly, the poodle's ears perked up, and it leaped off her lap, yapping its head off as it raced upstairs. The woman stood up and followed her dog, walking calmly to the stairs. "What's wrong, honey? Come back to Mommy."

The group chuckled as she left the room, but quieted down when they heard an angry voice from a dark corner of the room. "You should stay in Gotham. I hear the weather's better."

Someone's cell phone illuminated the Batman's face in a dark corner of the room, then his fist slammed into the owner's face. The whole room erupted into action, most of which was a retreat led by Penguin, who could move surprisingly fast. A few stayed behind to delay him while Penguin made his getaway. No matter.

The fire alarm went off, shrieking through the entire building. It was annoying, but failed to distract the five mercenaries left behind. They pulled out their handguns and took aim while Batman rushed them. Penguin's normal trained troops could be handled in under a couple minutes. His personal guards? Not so much.

Batman disarmed one of the men, but found himself thrown into a nearby table. This would take a little while. He dropped a flash grenade, and with the group stunned, he broke one man's already cracked ribs with a jab to the abdomen, twisted another man's arm until it fractured, and shot a woman with a rifle in the leg.

One of the remaining mercenaries used a stripper pole to his advantage and kicked Batman in the head. He recovered quickly, caught the next blow, and broke the man's ankle. He went down momentarily while another man, in a show of brute force pulled the pole out from the ceiling and stage floor to use as a weapon. The woman found her gun and fired at the two, grazing Batman's arm and forcing both of them behind the stage.

"You're going to get us all killed, Anne!" he shouted.

"I'm out," she announced. "Rob, give me one of yours."

'Rob' just moaned in response due to his ribs and spleen

"Oh, it's no good. All I'm seeing is stars," she said in resignation.

"And that made you think it was a good idea to start shooting in the first place?" exclaimed the man with the fractured wrist.

While the group was arguing, Batman 'borrowed' the pole, gave the owner a solid right hook, and knocked the other two off their feet. He handcuffed the three of them to a table, decided the other two probably wouldn't be going anywhere, and ran up to the main floor.

The dance floor was completely empty of patrons. The fire alarm had done its job. The only people on the floor were Tex and a woman with absurdly poofy white hair wearing an old silk, green dress. Oh, and a poodle. The two women were locked in a vicious fight that neither seemed to be on top of. The mystery woman had a knife that she kept slashing across Tex's face with a metal-on-metal _cling!_ Each ring enraged her more and more. Tex, on the other hand, was just trying to get it away from her. " _Hi Batman._ "

"There was a group that came by."

" _Yeah_." Tex got the knife out of her grasp and threw her halfway across the room. " _Ha ha! Ah!_ " She ducked as another knife flew over her head. " _How many of those do you have?_ "

"Why won't you die!" she shrieked as she came in for another attack.

"Did you see where they went?" Batman asked.

Tex managed to put the woman in a brief headlock. " _Upstairs. Have fun._ "

The woman broke free and threw Tex over her shoulder into a table. Batman silently wished her the same as he broke one of the one one-way mirrors overseeing the lounge and dance floor, and flew up via grappling rope. Batman tackled someone in the hall as he landed, and threw him down to the floor below. After making sure he was alive and writing in pain with two broken ankles, he stalked down the hall to find the remaining men and the Penguin before they could get away.

The top floor was darkened and sparsely decorated. The hall was a row of windows on one side and administrative offices on the other. One of the doors was opened an inch or two, letting light and voices spill out into the hall.

"It's two minutes away, Mr. Cobblepot," said a timid woman.

"That's not good enough. Tell them to drive faster!" he snarled back.

"We put our best men on him," said another man, defending her.

"They're not good enough. _Never_ underestimate the Batman. That was my only mistake. We have to leave now!"

As much as he wanted to hear the end of this conversation, he needed to stop the Penguin now. At the end of the hall was a utility closet with the fuse box. Batman pulled out the main fuse and the Iceberg Lounge plunged into silence and darkness. This would be his play ground.

Several people spilled out of the office, each armed with a firearm and at least one flashlight. This was a familiar fight. He easily avoided the glance of the flashlights until he slipped into the center of the group. A second later, someone realized that he was right next to them and tried to knock him over the head with the butt of his gun. Batman avoided the blow, which landed on another man's head, and knocked him out with an uppercut.

The other sprang into action, but the Batman was quicker. In a rush of confusion and fisticuffs, he managed to either knock out or incapacitate every last one of them. Often a bit of misdirection was all he needed. Their panic did nearly all the work for him. He lashed together a few with handcuffs, and when he ran out of those, he tied up the rest with a bit of cord he kept on his utility belt.

At the end of the hall was a door with a staircase to the roof. It had been left slightly ajar, meaning this was the way the Penguin had come. He had left one man behind with a rifle just in case the others couldn't do their job. "Hey!" The man aimed at the Batman, but he just tore the gun out of his hands, japed him in the gut, and knocked him over the head. The man collapsed and fell down the stairs.

Batman threw open the door to the roof.

Penguin stood in the middle of the roof, holding a small device in his hand. A rope ladder hung behind him, which was suspended by a helicopter. Down below, the building was surrounded by police cars. The police were already swarming the Iceberg Lounge and ordering the helicopter to leave. "You're trapped, Penguin!" Batman shouted. "Give up now!"

One of his goons handed him the handset to a megaphone. "See this? This is a detonator to several reasonably sized bombs, and they're all armed to blow now."

"Why would you blow up your own building?"

"Oh, they're not here. Remember the bomb at Wayne Enterprises? I've got twenty-four more in buildings all around town. You could try looking for them, but I'll be long gone by then. That's right, Gotham P.D. I've got a _bomb!_ Now back off! All of you!"

Batman slowly put his hands up, careful to give the Penguin what he wanted:

Surrender.

* * *

"—really doesn't like my helmet," Jackie finished lamely and sighed. "Don't get in trouble, Jenny." Since Batman already took care of the man in charge of parking, she wrapped her braid around her neck, pushed the button on her collar so her helmet would come back on, and left the lot to go through the front door.

"Back of the line," the bouncer demanded when she approached him.

" _Ladies and Gentlemen,_ " she announced. " _Things are going to get ugly tonight. I would advise you to leave. Now._ " Tex slammed the heel of her hand into the bouncer's nose, head-butted his assistant, and calmly walked inside. The entire line shrieked and fled in her wake.

The party inside pretty much ignored her. They just kept dancing and drinking. A waiter even delivered her a drink from a gentleman at the bar while she was assessing the situation. Since she couldn't figure out how to drink it, she gave it to a passing girl who was already quite drunk. Only one objection to her presence was made known, and he was about two feet tall, had sharp teeth, and fluffy brown fur. He raced up from downstairs and started barking and snarling at her.

Tex found the fire alarm and pulled it. The music stopped immediately and the crowd scattered like rats and the noise. Within a minute, the floor was clear of all humans. Most of them left out the doors, but she noticed a sizeable group run upstairs. The poodle, however, was still latched on her ankle. " _That sort of hurts, puppy_."

"Come here, love," said a woman with a low voice and white hair nearly as full as her dog's. The dog let go and returned to his mommy. "I'll give you one warning."

" _That's very nice, but - "_ Tex was cut off by a knife flying just past her head. She barely dodged in time to avoid it.

"That was your one warning." Two more knives appeared in her hands. "This one's for real."

The knife flew at Tex's heart as swift and silent as a bullet, but she didn't dodge this one. Her hand flashed out and caught the knife. " _I'm not scared of you_."

"You should be." The woman with the white hair attacked Tex with a flurry of slashes. Tex threw her knife aside and simply blocked the blows with her arms. The blade failed to make a scratch in her jacket. Seeing this, the woman's steely façade slipped for just a second, betraying a flash of rage. "I just sharpened these."

" _Bulletproof._ " Tex finally took a swing, and smashed her fist into her face. " _Mostly._ "

The woman touched her face in shock. "No one touches me. _No. One._ "

If Tex's face could be seen, it would have had an _Oh, Crap_ sort of expression as the woman tore a slit in her skirt and charged the vigilante. Her hands were probably about as lethal as her knives as she tried to take down Tex. She got in several vital blows to Tex's face, but Tex wasn't defenseless. She managed to hold her own against the vicious fighter, at least until she managed to stab her in the side. " _Oh, dear Lord!_ " she gasped, grabbing her ribs.

The woman paused, suddenly struck by an idea. Her knife was bent and warped, and Tex's jacket wasn't pierced or bleeding. "Bulletproof, I see." She grabbed the knife Tex had discarded and dropped hers, picked up an unopened bottle of champagne, and smashed it over her head nearly hard enough to shatter it. "But what about blunt objects?"

" _Admittedly not my favorite_." This time, it was Tex that began the attack, lashing out at the woman's hands in an attempt to get rid of the knife. While she wasn't bleeding, knives still hurt quite a bit, especially when they weighted her punches. But the woman was too fast. She dodged Tex's attacks with a patronizing ease, and slashed her knife across her face to distract her. However, Tex didn't seem to notice. She did, however, see Batman appear from the Arctic Circle. " _Hi Batman_."

"There was a group that came by," he said, never one for small talk.

" _Yeah._ " Tex caught the woman's arm and twisted the knife out of her hand. Then she threw her in the general direction of the dog that wouldn't stop yapping. " _Ha ha!_ " she cheered in victory. " _Ah!_ " She just barely ducked below another knife. " _How many of those do you have?_ "

The woman recovered too quickly. "Why won't you just die?" she shrieked as she came in for another go.

"Did you see where they went?" Batman continued, ignoring the fight.

Tex caught her and put her in a brief chokehold. " _Upstairs. Have fun._ " At that moment, the woman threw her over her back and into a table. " _What is your problem?_ "

The table hadn't broken when Tex landed on it, but it did yield to the woman's arm. Tex caught her hand and threw her across the room before getting up and going after her. She retaliated with a bar stool, hitting the vigilante a couple of times before she got a hold of it and broke the legs. Then she used two of the pieces as makeshift batons to beat her back to the VIP lounge. But then, she had had enough, took back the chair legs, and pushed Tex down the stairs. Unfortunately, Tex got a handful of her hair and took her down with her.

They tumbled all the way down the stairs and landed in a pile in a corner. Tex ended up with her face in a crystal sculpture. " _This man has way too many penguins._ "

The woman's arm snaked around her neck and put Tex in a necklock before she could recover from her trip. "I'll admit, this was fun. No one I've met has put up as much of a fight as you have. Well, there was one man. He's at the bottom of the Seine now. I miss him. You, on the other hand. I'll be glad to be rid of you. Did you know it only takes four minutes of oxygen starvation to cause brain damage? Not necessarily death, but it will do."

" _I did know that._ "

Her eyes widened and her nostrils flared. "You can breathe."

" _Yeah._ "

She tried a different approach, grabbing her head and slamming her face into the exposed concrete. "I'm not … usually … so direct."

" _Oof! – my helmet – ack – is cushioned – ow – You're not going – ow! – to give me – a – concussion._ "

"Then how do I kill you?"

Tex turned over and kicked her off. " _I'm sure you'll figure it out. In the meantime_ ..." She got up and tipped a table over on her. " _Can we please calm down?_ "

"I have a better idea." She grabbed a metal pole from a mass of bodies in the middle of the floor and swung it at Tex. The second blow knocked her over and she abandoned the pole in favor of just kicking her in the ribs. Tex caught her leg between her feet, pulled her to the ground, and tried beating her senseless.

Then she noticed her victim had gone motionless. Tex froze in her attack. " _Oh no. Wake up. Come on, wake up! Concussions are very bad things! I'll go get some ice._ " She ran to the bar, which was in sad shape, and rooted around the back. As soon as she found a champagne bucket with ice, the woman hit her over the head with a table leg.

"Amater." She dropped the club on Tex's crumpled body. Her poodle started barking bloody murder and she went upstairs. "What's wrong, Honey?" Her calm had been restored.

Down was not something Tex was used to. Neither was fighting women who talked to their poodles. Or even had poodles. Tex had the air knocked out of her, but not her senses. She pushed herself to her feet and ran upstairs. Poodle lady would not get away.

She wasn't running, though. She was standing in the middle of the dance floor with a knife in one hand and a scared girl in a cocktail dress and a coat with long brown air and white latex gloves. The knife was at the girl's jugular. "Friend of yours?"

Tex stopped fifteen feet from them. " _Um, well … what's your name?_ "

The girl swallowed and answered, "Star," with a tremor.

" _Yes. That is my friend Star. Let her go before someone gets hurt._ "

"That is exactly the point. It all depends on who you want to be killed."

" _The police are here. I can hear the sirens. You're not going to get away._ "

"Do you hear that helicopter up there too? That's my ride, and I'm not missing it. Not because of you."

" _Star, I am really, really sorry for this._ "

"Sorry about what?" Horror filled her voice. Tex pulled a small ball-shaped device from her pocket and snapped her wrist at their general direction. The next second, a small explosion threw them all down. "She cut my neck she cut my neck!" Star screamed.

The woman in question was on the ground, a thousand cuts and burns were all over her back and legs. She groaned, indicating she was still alive, but she didn't move. Tex touched her neck to check her pulse, but that was all the care she gave. She turned her attention to Star. " _It's just a graze. You'll be okay._ "

"She slit my throat! That was a bomb! A bomb!"

Tex retrieved a gauze bandage from a pocket on her belt, and put it on Star's neck. " _Don't choke yourself. And when the police ask, tell them that was Batman's grenade._ "

"But -"

" _Star, you're going to be fine. I have to go._ "

"Oh, my friend's on the roof! You have to go get Jenny! She was going after Oswald."

Tex signed. " _Dang it, Jenny,_ " she grumbled.

* * *

"—really doesn't like my helmet," Jackie finished lamely. She took a deep breath and looked at me. "Don't get in trouble, Jenny." Then she wrapped her braid around her neck, pushed the button on her collar, and her helmet came over her head. Her eyes flashed red, letting her know that all systems were go, and she left the little garage.

As soon as she was gone, I sprang out of my car and opened the trunk. Inside lay 24 gleaming crystal penguins, each separated by a small foam bed. In one corner of my trunk was a box of white latex gloves, of which I put on a pair. No need to leave any evidence.

"Jenny!" Star appeared at the mouth of the garage and ran to me. "I can't find Bruce!"

"Hello Star. I'm sure he's fine." I tried to use my body to hide the contents of my trunk from her.

"He came to find you, and I went outside to call the police."

"Why?"

"I thought Cobblepot was going to kill you. What happened to your neck?"

"Cobblepot tried to have me killed."

"Oh! I thought I was being paranoid. So did Bruce find you?"

"No, but I'm sure he'll be alright. The police are coming so everything should be under control." That's when the fire alarm went off. "On second thought, I could use your help with this." I handed her two latex gloves.

"What are you doing?" she asked as she put the gloves on.

"We're … going to decorate the Lounge a bit with some penguins." I had a backpack in the trunk and put two penguins in it. Then I handed Star two to carry in her arms. "I hear he likes penguins."

"Is this legal?"

"Not entirely. Well, they're his in the first place, but I don't think he'll be overjoyed to see them again." I put on the backpack.

"Wait, what?"

I grabbed two more penguins and marched to the service door. I listened at the crack for the room to quiet down. I've never listened to a fight before, but it sounded incredibly painful. I could almost count how many bones were broken. At some point, the punches and blows stopped. Handcuffs were adjusted and locked, then there was only moaning from the injured. I pulled open the door and held it open for Star. Inside, she stopped dead in her tracks. She was looking right at a pile of about five thugs.

"They're not going to hurt you." I set down two penguins in a corner and removed the foam.

"Are you sure about that?" She set down her penguins in the corner closest to the door.

"Actually, no. Go ahead and stand by the door." I left my other two penguins on the far side of the room, then we went back out and reloaded. Star still kept eying the group warily, but since they hadn't escaped yet, she was ever-so-slightly braver. We left a total of twelve penguins in the basement. When we reloaded with another six, I decided some were needed on the first floor. Before we left, we took the rest of the penguins out of my trunk and left them scattered around the garage.

"Jenny, look!" Star stopped again as we crossed the room. "A security camera!" She pointed to a corner of the ceiling. True enough, there was something that looked like a camera with a blinking red light, but I shook my head.

"Place like this, it's most likely a dummy to keep people honest. No need to be worried."

We started up the stairs. About halfway up, I heard a table fall over and Tex's mechanical grunting, so I stopped. We would have to wait. Suddenly, two women appeared at the top of the steps. One was dressed in a black and red leather-like suit with a metal head, and the other was in an old, torn green silk dress with white permed hair. Tex and the woman that owned the poodle. One second they were fighting and completely ignoring us. The next, they were coming down the stairs, tumbling and shouting. I pushed Star over to the side so they could pass unhindered.

"What was – you know what? I don't think I want to know."

"Same here," I replied.

We put our penguins on whatever tables were still standing so they were disguised as tacky centerpieces. Considering the décor of this place, they fit right in. I kept one penguin in my backpack. As we were setting up the last one, I head the unmistakable sound of a helicopter near the roof. What kind of idiot lands on a roof this low in the city? And surrounded by cops? (Unless they were the cops. Unlikely.) Cobblepot was trying to get away.

"I'm going to the roof!" I shouted at Star. "You need to leave now!"

"What?" I guess the helicopter might have been kind of loud.

"You!" I pointed at her, then at the door. "Leave!"

Hopefully she got the message. I didn't have any more time to waste. I found the stairs that went up to the second floor. The lights had been cut, but I could still see a pile of bodies, all handcuffed and tied up. I carefully stepped over them and found a door labeled with some stairs. As I made my way up, I took out the last penguin, dropped the backpack and foam in the stairwell, and pushed open the door.

Outside, the wind whipped around my hair and blew a heavy black sheet of fabric into my face. Batman was standing still a few yards from the door and shouting at someone else, but the helicopter was practically drowning him out. The Penguin was talking back to him via a megaphone. "That's right Gotham P.D. I've got a _bomb!_ Now back off! All of you!" That would explain the detonator in his hand.

Cobblepot hadn't noticed me yet, so I walked past Batman, keeping my skirt down with one hand and clutching the penguin tightly to me with the other. (Wind. Seriously.) He didn't stop mocking Batman until I waved in his face. He was surprised to see me alive. Even more so to see the statue in my hand. I took his handset from him. "I believe this is yours." Then I set it down by his feet.

Penguin looked from the penguin, to me, to the Batman, and back to the penguin. He snatched back his handset. "That's only one."

I took it back. "You're right. Five more are on the dance floor, twelve are in the Arctic Circle, and the last six are in the garage. Your move." I handed it back and bowed out to Batman. He had a distinct grin like he had just regained his edge.

Penguin's henchman dropped the megaphone and abandoned him for the chopper, and the pilot decided it was time to go. The helicopter flew away, finally letting us hear something. He turned to run, but Batman was too fast and tackled him. He gave him two solid punches, which didn't knock him out, but incapacitated him enough. "That's for Tex!" I thought I heard him say.

I cleared my throat. "Tried to kill me. Twice."

Batman shook his head, but hit him anyway. Right then, Tex burst through the door. " _Jenny, what in the -!_ " she shouted.

"Oh good, you're here. What took you so long?" I replied.

" _Lady with a poodle, with poodle hair, tried to kill me and was doing a very good job!_ "

Batman gave me a questioning look and I shrugged. Then he stood and gave Tex a pair of handcuffs. "Take the credit," he instructed before he shot his grappling cable at one of the taller buildings surrounding us.

" _Wait, what? No!_ " But she was too late. Batman was already sailing off into the night. Jackie was probably grumbling under her helmet, but she handcuffed the Penguin regardless and pulled him to his knees. " _Police will be up here any second. I can't stay. Be good, both of you._ " With that, she took a running jump off the roof, onto the fire escape of the neighboring building, climbed up the side, and just kept running.

* * *

The police were done with me around 3 a.m. They impounded my car since they found the explosives in the building and wanted to make sure my car didn't have any. Plus, I was a witness and it was evidence. So Jackie came to pick me up on her motorcycle. Me in a dress, minus a helmet and coat, plus a Ducati – yeah, that wasn't going to happen. "No."

"It's this or you walk." I was shivering, so she took off her jacket and gave it to me. This was something she very rarely did, so I accepted it immediately.

"Won't you be cold?" She was only wearing a half sleeved black t-shirt under a solid black corset she only wore as added protection against bullets.

"I'll be fine, but we've got to talk."

"Now?"

Jackie lifted up the police tape and we walked away from prying ears. "I met a girl named Star tonight."

"I know her. She's my boss's girlfriend."

"Jenny, you put Star in danger." There was no trace of a smile in Jackie's eyes. She looked old for a moment – older than me. "I saw her gloves. She was wearing them because she was helping you."

"I knew you were there and could save her. That's what you do."

"Star got hurt. It should have been much worse, but it wasn't. You put her in that situation when she didn't have to be. As soon as you enlisted her help, she became your responsibility. And dang it, Jenny! I told you to stay out of it!"

"You needed my help!" I snapped back.

"I had a plan!"

"I had a better one!"

"Alright! Your plan was better, but that's not the point. Star could have been killed while you were handling those bombs. And Poodle Lady had the perfect opportunity to slice open her throat."

"I told her to leave, Jackie. Why would I leave her sitting on a bomb?"

"You didn't tell her she was handling explosives, or else she would have gone to the police. Instead she got scared and hid. People don't just obey you because you want them to. You never made sure she was out of danger."

"I didn't judge any of this to be dangerous for her or me."

"Penguin sent you into a blind alley to be killed not ten minutes before. On top of that, you knew it was a bad idea to come here in the first place."

"Alright! I knew I was in over my head, and I needed her help or else none of us would have survived. I'll go visit Star in the hospital tomorrow and tell her that I was wrong. The next time, I'm not letting anyone get involved."

Jackie stopped in her tracks. "Dad was right."

"About what?"

"You get yourself into trouble deliberately. That's why I came in the first place, and that's why I'm going to stay."

"For how long?"

She shrugged. "Until the day I die if I have to."


	12. Chapter Eleven

"Imogen, I need to rant!" I announced as I pushed myself past her when she answered the door.

"Uh, is this work related?"

"No, it's Jackie related. I can't go home; she's driving me nuts!"

"You know, I have a phone, and I'm pretty sure you have one too. A cell phone, even." She ran ahead of me, trying to pick up various things around her living room.

I wasn't really paying attention to anything in her house, just trying to find a place to walk around. "This is a rant that requires pacing." I moved a chair from the kitchen table out of my way and started making a small lap around her living room. "I don't know why I thought it would be a good idea to let her move in."

Imogen turned her laptop screen away from me a few inches. "Didn't you tell me she was living on the streets?" she said, trying to distract me.

It worked, of course. "Yes, and I could have used a roommate. I remember that conversation."

"And she's your little sister," she added. "I told you this would be a good way to get close to her again."

" _She's_ the one that left us. Backpacking through Europe. Bah!" I threw my hands up in the air.

"But she wrote you letters. It's not like she cut off contact completely."

"Then why did she leave in the first place, Imogen?"

"You're the one that refused to write back," she argued, "and you made the offer to have her move in."

"I know! I can't figure out how I feel about all this. I've been wanting her to come home for the last three years, and I'm glad she decided to come back and save my life, but every time I look at her or talk to her, I think about the day she left and I'm mad all over again. It was a lot easier to hate her at a distance or just ignore her completely."

She stared at me after my flood of potent rage. "This isn't going to be the typical roommate rant, is it."

She was the only roommate I had ever been able to tolerate. Well, the only one that could tolerate me. That's beside the point. "She has a job at some fancy restaurant where she works most afternoons and evenings. Then she dresses up as Tex and hangs out with Batman so she gets home at all hours of the night."

"It isn't," she sighed.

"She comes in through the window, which doesn't wake me up, but it does leave us vulnerable to break ins. Does she care? I guess not."

"You live with a vigilante that beats up those kinds of guys on a nightly basis."

"She doesn't sleep in the bed I got for her. Instead, she uses this ratty old sleeping bag and sleeps on the floor. She thinks I don't know, but I do. She has exactly four changes of clothing, two of which are her work uniforms. All of these she washes religiously."

"That sounds … frugal."

"Then she makes me lunch every day before I go to work. Sometimes breakfast too. And she keeps bringing home dinner from her job, and it's the most amazing food I have ever tasted."

"I'm confused. What's the problem?"

"I just told you. She's making me lunch."

"Does she pay her share of rent?"

"Yes." Obviously.

"Does she leave dishes in the sink?"

"No."

"Does she steal your stuff?"

"No."

"Does she wake you up at all hours of the night?"

"No."

"Does she have annoying friends she brings over?"

"No. No friends."

"So she's the ideal roommate," she diagnosed.

"No!" Hasn't she been listening?

"Okay, I think I know what your problem is. She's being nice to you and you have no idea how to handle it because you know she was right and you were wrong."

"Why would she do that? It's diabolical!" I stopped pacing and flopped into an armchair. "She acts like a complete idiot, but she's an evil genius, and _I_ am an evil genius."

"I know. I wish you had the psyche of a normal human."

"Bah! Dull. Alright, I'm done. Your turn."

She rolled her eyes. "What in the world do I have to rant about?"

"Oh, for the love of – first off, me. Your friend who chooses to ignore social graces whenever it's inconvenient to you and selfishly takes up your time. Especially when you're complaining to your friend on Skype about someone that walked out without paying for a very expensive hair style thingy."

"How -"

I gestured to the police papers and security camera screen-caps on her table which I saw as soon as I walked in the door. "Stop leaving this stuff out for me to see. Don't worry, I'll figure out who it is. And you." I went to her laptop and turned the screen to face me. It was the guy Imogen was talking to before I burst in. He was Indian, probably in his late 20s, with short black hair, square framed glasses, a neat, white polo shirt, and a little acne. "Where are you talking from?" I demanded.

"Jenny!" Imogen scolded.

"Michigan," he nervously replied.

"Uh huh. You're staying on the third floor of a Days Inn in Gotham City. Ask her out, stupid. She doesn't get cleaned up after work for just anyone. And I doubt you take trips to Gotham just for kicks and giggles."

"No, it's a business -"

I turned the laptop away. "Well, I've got to get to class. Great talk. Thanks."

I walked out of her apartment without waiting for a goodbye. As I closed the door, I heard her say, "So that's my brilliant friend that I hate sometimes."

* * *

I got home from class a few hours later. Jackie was out as usual, and I was too tired to turn the light on, so I just dropped my things by the door. That's when I noticed that the window in the living room had been left slightly open. I wasn't too tired to be suspicious of that. Jackie always closed and locked the window when she left. My mind leaped to the only logical conclusion: Burglar.

I did not have softball practice today, but I usually keep three bats around the house. One by the door, one by my bed, and one in my closet for actual softball. I do live in Gotham, after all, and I have to be prepared to defend myself. I slipped off my shoes and carefully picked up my bat, carrying it ready to swing. I tip-toed through my living room, avoiding the floorboards that creaked. Nothing was touched in there or the kitchen – not even the TV. I moved on to the bedrooms down the hall.

My door had been left cracked open exactly two inches, which was how I left it every morning. It was unlikely anyone was in there, but I pushed the door open another two inches and looked inside from every angle. Empty. I put my back to the wall and peeked over my right shoulder into Jackie's room. There in the shadows, someone was moving, going through her meager belongings. That made no sense. I owned everything valuable.

I stood in front of the door where he couldn't see me. At some point, he would have to leave through here, and it would have to be soon. Jackie doesn't have much stuff to go through. A few moments later, he gave up on finding anything. The door opened and I reacted instinctively. It was only after I hit his head like a softball to score a home run that I realized I just knocked out the Batman.

"Oh. Not good."

The lights turned on in the living room. "Jenny!" Jackie called. "Are you alright? The lights were off."

Thank God for her incredible timing. "Can you come here?" I still held the bat in an iron grip, ready to swing again. "I'm going to need some help with the body."

Jackie flew to me and looked in horror at the floor of her room. Then she turned to me with the same expression. "What did you do?"

"He broke in," I explained.

"Okay, give me your weapon." She pried the bat out of my hands, but she did not have an easy time with it. "Jenny … come on … let. Go!" She finally tore it out and set it on the ground before going to help the Batman. "How many times did you hit him?"

"Just once. I think I panicked."

"A little, yeah." She turned him over onto his back and put a pillow from her bed under his head. "Can you go get two glasses of water and a bottle of aspirin?"

"Is he going to be okay?"

"Well, from what I can tell, he's playing possum. Shoo."

My hands were shaking as I filled two cups with ice and water. Honestly, I should not be reacting like this. _He_ was the one breaking into _my_ home. I had a right to feel safe here, and he deserved to be brained with a bat. So why was I feeling so terrified of the concussed beast?

When I came back, Batman had gotten to his feet and Jackie was trying to get him to stay down. However, he was having a hard time keeping steady and she was trying to get him to sit down on her bed. "Sit, or I give her back the bat. Thank you, Jenny." He finally fell onto the bed. Then she took one of the glasses and the aspirin and held the water out to him. He took the glass and she poured four pills out of the bottle. "Let's just start with two and go from there."

"Don't need it," he growled.

"I'm the one that hit you. Yes you do," I bit back.

"Jenny. Sit. Drink." I did as she commanded. Then she turned back to her other patient. "Are you feeling nauseous? Lightheaded? Dizzy? Ringing in your ears?" Batman dry-swallowed the pills. "I'm going to take that as a yes. You're not fine." She put the other two pills in his palm and went to her closet to get her jacket.

There was a fake back to her closet where she kept her more dangerous items. Jackie zipped up her jacket, gathered her hair and stuffed it down the back before activating her helmet. I've never known exactly what her suit could do, but seemed like it could do just about anything, including x-ray someone's head and see if there was bleeding in the brain. She held her hand up over his face and eyes as she took a good look around his head.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

" _Checking for bruising_ ," she replied.

"No, I mean -"

"Her hands have lead or something in them," I explained. "She's trying not to peek."

" _Well, I'm not a medical professional,_ " she declared before retracting her helmet, "but that is definitely looking like a minor concussion at least. She got you good. You're going to have to take tonight off."

"Absolutely not," he snarled.

"I will give Jenny back the bat and let her finish the job. You do not have to be out every single night. You are either going to stay here and get some sleep and have Jenny wake you up every two hours, or you can go home, go to bed, and have a trusted friend wake you up every two hours. You may also want to go visit the hospital and get some better painkillers. I'll only let you choose option two if that trusted friend can pick you up."

"The Tumbler has autopilot," he said, answering her question.

I raised an eyebrow in a questioning glance at Jackie, and she explained, "That big tank, Batmobile thingy." Ah, yes. That clears it up nicely. I did notice that Batman winced at Jackie's name for it. "I can take care of the city tonight, but please. Don't be an idiot. You have to get some sleep. However, while I have you at my mercy …" She sat down next to him on the bed. "What are you doing here?" She had a smile that could give you diabetes, but it had an edge of anger to it.

Jackie wasn't interested in asking him the right questions, so I filled in. "Did you really think that you could go through her things and find out something about her? Everything you'll ever want to know about her, plus some, you'll hear from her."

"It's true. I talk too much."

"You already know Jackie's name, which is a lot more than she's got on you. Were you just trying to prove that you know where we live?" My questions were coming faster and reflected my resurfacing wrath.

"Jenny," she sighed, trying to keep the peace. "Could you step outside for a minute?"

"No!" I jumped to my feet. "He broke into _my_ apartment! You're supposed to be making this city safe, not making me insecure in my own home! And for what? To go through my sister's dirty laundry? What did you discover?"

"Calm down, Jenny. I'm not mad."

"Why not?"

"You hit him with a bat! I figured that was good enough. Now, Batman." She put a hand on his shoulder, more patronizing than friendly. "I swear to you that I will never pry into your life or identity. In return, I don't care if you feel like you need to dig into my past because you don't trust me or you think I'm dangerous, because you're not going to discover a whole lot that way. I was raised with her," she pointed at me. "I don't leave a whole lot of evidence behind. But please, _please_ promise me that you will never piss Jenny off again. Seriously, this is going to take me three days to calm her down, and she was already mad at me."

What was wrong with her? That wasn't the problem here! "Oh, come on! I have a legitimate reason!"

"Okay." Jackie leaped off the bed, gently twisted an arm behind my back and pushed me out the door. "We're going to take our little family dispute outside and let you sneak out the window with what little dignity you've got left. Bye!" She kicked the door shut behind her.

I tore myself out of her hands. "That was entirely unnecessary."

Jackie bit her lip to suppress a grin. She held her breath for three seconds, then opened the door to her room. Batman had disappeared, leaving nothing but an open window in his wake. He had even taken the glass of water. Jackie burst into giggles. "You hit _Bat_ man with a _bat!_ "

"Is this about the pun or the fact that I gave him a concussion?"

Her answer was several more minutes of laughter.

"He's definitely not going to live this one down, is he."

She caught her breath. "Ah, he will. He deserved it, but I kind of drove him to it. I've been giving him the runaround for the last three weeks. I'm going to get changed and go. You should go lie down."

"I'm fine," I shook my head.

"You're coming off an adrenaline high, and you don't handle violence well."

I held out my right hand. Still shaking, and cold. "But I do." I looked back on my night at the Iceberg Lounge with some fondness.

"You've never wielded the weapon before and you've never been this close to killing someone. Go take a nap."

"But I have homework."

She took me by the shoulders and pushed me to my room. "You'll have time later. Right now, nap."

Jackie operates under a 'sleep-cures-all' belief. But sometimes she's right.


	13. Chapter Twelve

The caller ID showed only a blocked number, but Tex answered it anyway. " _Hello?_ "

"I was going to check the docks tonight. Make sure you do a thorough sweep."

" _Batman? How did you get my number?_ "

"The docks are a popular place for drug smugglers."

" _What drugs? You shut down the Red Triangle a couple weeks ago and everyone else is too scared to smuggle anything else._ "

"Just go check."

" _I'm slightly occupied at the moment._ " She tightened a harness on her waist.

"With what?"

" _I'm about to jump off a thirty story building._ "

Batman paused. "Why?"

" _Later. You must have just made it home, so do me a favor and go get some sleep._ " She promptly hung up before he could argue. She could tell he hated being trapped in bed and refused to let go of what control he had left. Still, tonight was her turn to keep an eye on Gotham City her way. She tested the line, and then took a running leap off the roof.

The line slowed her descent and stopped her at the 14th floor. The window had already been cut open, so Tex crawled through and unhooked the line, attaching it to a nearby desk to keep it there. The room was a darkened personal office with plenty of furniture and plants to keep the occupant sane in this cutthroat corporate environment. She looked through the propped open door to check for any security guards. There was one making his rounds, but he went around the corner and left the coast clear.

Tex took off on a silent run down the hall, made a sharp right, and stopped suddenly, pressed against the wall. On both sides of the hall were sterilized rooms with glass walls. Inside were lab equipment, computers, and specialized drawers for hazardous materials. Three of those drawers were open and their contents missing. A fourth was being opened by one man in black clothes and a white full face mask while two similarly dressed others stood by to raid the contents.

The door slid open when Tex approached it. The sound startled the men and they drew their guns on her. "Freeze! Hands on your head!" one of them shouted.

Tex casually walked through the room, inspecting the vials and lab equipment. " _Careful, gentlemen. You wouldn't want to break anything. There are some nasty diseases in here._ " She picked up a test tube of a clear liquid. " _Influenza. Quite a deadly strain, I believe. My helmet filters out airborne pathogens. I don't think your plastic ones from the costume shop do the same."_

"I'm a good shot," one of them threatened.

" _Oh, no doubt, but this isn't about talent. It's about skill, speed, and knowing – Catch!"_

Tex tossed the vial like a hot potato at the men. They scrambled to catch it before it shattered, and she took the chance to run and jump-kick them before they could think. With a couple quick blows in succession, she dispatched all three just as the vial fell safely to the ground.

Tex kicked their guns away, handcuffed each of them to a bolted down desk, and pulled off each of their masks. Then, for good measure, she stepped on the vial. "No!" the screamed.

" _Relax. It's just saline._ " She picked up each of the removed samples of virulent bacteria and carefully returned them to their proper containers. No need for an accidental disease outbreak. " _Out of curiosity, how did you get in here? This system doesn't even look like you guys tried to break it._ " A noise in the hall cut her musings short, and she checked the clock. " _Ugh. No time. Don't go anywhere._ " She pulled the door all the way shut so it automatically locked, and ran back down the hall.

A second later, a guard happened upon the would-be thieves. The vigilante responsible for their capture was already out the window and on the ground by the time they raised the alarm. The next minute, she was on her bike again and sailing around the city.

* * *

"Have you gone to the docks yet?"

" _Gee, has it only been two hours since you last called?_ " She looked at her watchless wrist. " _What do you know? It has._ "

"I take it you mean no. What have you been doing?"

" _Stopped three muggings, returned five purses and wallets, beat up a rapist, and encouraged a few kids to go back to school._ "

"Those are little crimes. You need to be looking for the big ones."

" _Do you know where big crimes start? Little crimes. I'm just dealing with the ones the police won't catch._ "

"There are better things you could be doing."

Tex clenched her jaw and struggled not to crush her phone. " _Fine. I will take a look when I get a few minutes._ "

"What could you possibly be doing now that's so important?"

Tex looked at the rising number on the gas pump, then to her beloved Ducati, and decided to bite her tongue on the subject. " _Important things._ "

"That better mean you're stopping an armed robbery," he growled. He sounded even nastier, like his head was acting up.

A beat up white pickup truck pulled into the gas station and parked away from the building, out of the way of the security cameras. Two wannabe gansters jumped out of the truck and approached the store. Their pants were so baggy, they easily concealed a handgun and a shotgun. Tex checked the time on her phone. 12:03 a.m. " _Right on time. You're very good. Now go get some sleep._ " She returned the gas nozzle to the pump and moved her bike over to the door of the gas station before she went inside.

The men from the pickup each had a gun trained on the store clerk, a skinny 17-year-old at his high school job. The thug with the shotgun ordered him to, "Get everything out of the safe!" The one with the handgun was already emptying the register drawer. When he heard the bell ring as Tex entered, he pointed the gun at her.

"Hands on your head! Get down!"

" _Easy boys. You still have a chance to walk away from this._ " She walked towards them slowly with her hands halfway raised.

"Get in the back and empty the safe," the shotgun thug ordered the clerk. "I'll take care of him."

The one with the handgun pushed the kid into the back room. The other shoved the barrel of his gun into her face – er, helmet. " _Her, not him._ " She pulled the gun out of her face, punched him in the nose, then used his gun as a bat to hit him in the stomach. " _And … you lost your chance._ "

Hearing the commotion, the second man came out of the back room with his gun pointed at her. "Drop it!" he ordered.

Tex disassembled the gun with one foot on the first man's back to keep him down. She set each piece on the counter. " _Safety's on_."

He came around to her side of the counter. "I'm not falling for that. Get on the ground!"

" _No, really_." She kicked his hand up, caught his gun, and fired at his stomach. There was only a small _click_. " _See?_ "

She let the guy on the ground up and the two of them took off in their truck. The store cashier slowly came out from the back room. "Are … are you the police?"

" _Nope._ " She broke down the second gun. " _Are you alright?_ "

"I think so. No one got shot or anything. I don't know, I still haven't registered that they were trying to rob me."

" _Okay. Do you feel like pressing charges?_ "

"Well, nothing was taken and no one was hurt. I don't see the point."

" _Alright. Let the police know, though, so they can be on the lookout. I think they were in a white Toyota._ " She turned to leave.

"Wait. Who are you? Do you work with Batman?"

" _I'm Tex, and what gave you that idea?_ "

She took her bike and rode it across the street into the business complex. It was a place for small, but steady businesses. This particular area all had electronics related businesses, from elevator switches to computer motherboards, to just the monitors. After 5pm, most of these buildings were empty with only their automated security keeping an eye on things.

Deep into the complex, Tex noticed one of the doors to a business specializing in cyber security was propped open, and a man in a black hoodie was leaving with a computer tower. She was far enough away that he hadn't noticed the sound of her motorcycle, so she parked it in the shadows near a building and snuck up to him.

The first man put his computer into a nearby SUV. He was followed by another man dressed similarly carrying an armful of hard drives. A woman was returning from the vehicle to go get more stuff. The first man saw something in Tex's general direction. "Do you see that?"

"See what?" said the woman.

"A couple red lights. They look like eyes. Were they there before?"

"It's nothing."

But Tex saw something more when he turned to her: a full-face white mask, much like the ones the thieves had in the bio-tech facility. She stepped into the light. " _You guys again?_ "

The three of them panicked. "Take what you can and run!" the other man shouted, pulling out a knife. "I'll hold him off!"

Tex rolled her eyes, but approached the man, carefully analyzing the people running in and out of the building as well as the one daring to attack her. His voice was distinctly different from anyone in the last crew, and this one had a woman. Different crew, different target, same costume. He thrust his knife at her neck, she ducked and kneed him in the groin. Then she stepped over his body, which was curled in the fetal position, kicked away his knife, and got in position to take the other two on.

They must have decided that they had enough because they were already trying to speed away in their SUV. The driver aimed the vehicle at Tex and the man on the ground. She ran at it and caught it by its side-view mirror. It only took her a second to realize that she was not exactly in a position to stop them. Also, they were about to run over their friend.

Tex punched a hole into the driver's side window, punched it again to make a bigger opening, and grabbed the wheel enough to re-direct the SUV so it avoided hitting the man on the ground. Fortunately, this was long enough that he survived. Unfortunately, it was long enough for the driver to find a gun and fire at her face. She tumbled away and the SUV sped up and got away.

Only a little bruised, Tex got up and stumbled over to the man on the ground. He was still moaning and clenched in a ball. A quick search of his pockets produced a phone, which she used to call the police and report the robbery.

"What are you going to do to me?" he demanded when she kicked him over onto his back.

" _First off…_ " She pulled off his mask. Definitely a different guy from the last crew. He was Hispanic, but spoke with a strong Southern accent. " _I need to ask you a few questions._ "

"I don't know anything!"

" _Let me put it this way: Batman's off for tonight, but he'll be back tomorrow. He doesn't mind hurting people as much as I do, and I will give him your name._ "

"I don't know my boss's name, but I can give you the rendezvous point."

" _Except you're compromised, so he would have changed it. Have you met your boss? How did you arrange all this?_ "

"We didn't meet in person. He e-mailed all of us and we met here. The door was even unlocked when we got here. We were told to get as much high-tech computer stuff as we could."

" _Huh. This is a company that's in business to protect against hackers and the like. They wouldn't have just forgotten to lock their door."_ Tex's phone rang an alarm which she quickly silenced. " _Dang. You guys have gotten me off schedule._ " She grabbed his arm and dragged him over to the door which she pushed closed. She tested it once to make sure it was locked this time before zip-tying him to the handle. " _You'll explain everything to the police, right?_ "

"Uh, yeah. Think they'll go easy on me?"

" _Sure. Why not._ "

* * *

Tex parked across the street from a SunTrust Bank with a white mask in one hand and her phone in the other. It had almost been two hours since Batman had called and she half expected him to ring her any minute. That, and the mask she thought was cheap earlier was a bit more sophisticated than she thought. The face was made of plaster and took its expression from the comedy face. There was a microphone hidden by the mouth and a speaker by the ear. Additionally, there was a camera next to the eye, a small battery in the cheek, and an antenna in the string that held it on his face.

Her phone alarm buzzed, and a white van stopped in front of the bank. Five men got out, each dressed in white clothes and a white mask. They weren't even trying to be subtle. The five of them marched up to the door and … just walked in like it was daylight and normal business hours.

A second later, Tex raced across the street and into the bank after them. The door wasn't even shut when she slipped in and slid across the lobby. " _Large withdrawal planned, I presume?_ "

"Yep," said one of the men.

" _That's not going to happen._ "

"And who are you to stop us?"

" _Haven't you heard?_ " She took a fighting/heroic stance. " _I'm Tex._ "

"I don't care. You three, take care of her." He and a second man went into the back while the last three men blocked her way. He must have been the de facto leader.

The three men were built like Navy SEALS and wore masks with stony expressions, but that was most likely what they always looked like. The one in the middle took the first swing. Tex dodged the blow and brought the heel of her right hand up to shatter his jaw – or at least that's what she was aiming for. Instead, he grabbed her wrist and twisted her arm. It would have been enough to break it if she hadn't kicked him in the groin to make him let go.

All four of them paused and had one thought: This isn't going to be as easy as I thought it would be.

The three men in masks attacked at once, and Tex ducked and danced away. Then she tripped one with a nearby stanchion and wrapped the rope around his neck. The other two followed her lead and used the stanchions as clubs. Tex dragged her man backwards to avoid the swings from the other two, and finally released the rope and jumped away when he passed out from lack of oxygen. One man swung the stanchion down and Tex took the moment to give him a kick to the jaw while he was transitioning from one attack to the next. He absorbed the blow well and twisted her leg. She went with it, but the second man grabbed her arm and threw her across the room.

Tex rebounded off the massive table in the lobby and attacked them again, managing to grab hold of one man's neck in a rear naked choke. He threw her over his shoulder and his partner punched her face into the floor. That hurt his hand more than it hurt her head. Thinking that was enough to take care of her, they stepped back, but she leaped to her feet, ready to take more.

The three of them caught their breaths and waited for someone else to make the first move. Then the one on the ground regained a bit of consciousness, so Tex punched him in the abdomen to knock him out of the fight again. She was rushed again in a double tackle, but she leaped in the air, using their bodies as leverage, and knocked out their feet with a drop-kick. One fell to his face while the other just stumbled and returned his own kick to her face. Tex rolled over and snagged a potted plant which she cracked over the shoulders of the man trying to recover his footing. It dazed him enough that she could focus on the last man for a minute.

He grabbed another stanchion and brandished it like a mace. Tex got to her feet, ran to the tellers' windows, and jumped behind their desk before his metal club shattered the marble countertop where she used to be. Tellers always have their own security system not including the panic button, which she pressed. She had a split second to choose between mace, a metal bat, and a taser. Their mask and clothing made the mace and taser useless, so the bat it was.

She jumped back over the counter and hit his arm as hard as she could. There was small, satisfying _crack_ , which may or may not have been the bat. Either way, he dropped his weapon. Tex grabbed his other wrist with both hands and just squeezed. This crack was a lot louder, and left him screaming in pain.

The other two men recovered – mostly. They were still unsteady on their feet, but coherent enough to form an attack that pushed Tex into the wall and off her feet. One was trying to strangle her while the other punched her in the stomach repeatedly. She kicked the second one in the head, the first in the kneecap, and when she was dropped, she head-butted him. When he was down, she punched him in the face and threw her other elbow into the second man's nose, completely breaking it.

Tex quickly tied each of their hands behind their back with some heavy-duty zip ties. By the time she was done, the other two were coming out of the vault with a few bags of valuables. The man in front scanned the destroyed lobby, his defeated men, and the victorious Tex approaching them. His partner pulled out a handgun and emptied his clip at her. Five of those shots actually hit her, but she just absorbed the blows or let them bounce off her head and just kept walking. When she reached him, she took his gun in her hand and crushed the barrel.

The other man took this in and made a smart judgment call. "I'll give you one of these if you let us go." He held out one of the heavy bags, knowing full well brute force wasn't going to get them anywhere.

Tex looked between the two men, silent for a moment. " _Do you remember how I told you that you weren't leaving with anything?_ "

"We may have exchanged some words to that effect, yes."

" _I still haven't changed my mind._ " Then she took each one of their heads in her hands and knocked them together. When they collapsed to the ground, she tied them to a table and left them behind.

The police came a minute later, but Tex and her Ducati were long gone. She checked her phone for any messages, but there were only three missed calls from a blocked number. After that, the caller must have given up and gone back to bed. Tex groaned, realizing that it would be another two hours before Batman would call again, and this time, they _really_ needed to talk.

* * *

" _Hello?_ "

"Did you make it to the docks?"

She rubbed her temple in a feeble attempt to get some sleep out of her eyes. " _Yes, I'm at the docks now. No one's here, no one has been here, and no one's going to come here tonight._ "

"How long have you been there?"

" _Almost two hours. It's 4 a.m. and I'm getting tired. Are you happy now?_ "

"If you were done, why didn't you go home?"

" _I've kind of got a problem and I wanted to run it by you._ "

"I can give you two minutes." He sounded like he wanted to give her more time, as problems intrigued him, but due to the nature of his injury, he had to be back in bed soon.

" _I stopped three robberies tonight. One was at a Bio-Tech Lab, the second was at a Cyber Security Facility, and the third was, surprise, a bank. Thing was, all the thieves were wearing the same mask. It's a full face mask that looks like a cheap one from a costume shop, but it's custom made from plaster with communication equipment embedded right in. I think they were all working for one person, which means we've got a new, big-ish player in Gotham City."_

"How many did you catch?"

" _Nine. Two got away from the second robbery. I also hung on to one of the masks._ "

"Alright, I'll alert Commissioner Gordon. How do you want to play this?"

" _I don't know. I don't really handle big operations like this. I'm a 'little crimes' sort of vigilante._ " She took a deep breath, which was more like a yawn. " _Do you have the resources to back-trace a signal? I'm afraid this mask is going to broadcast my location._ "

"Leave it somewhere I can find it on the docks. I'll pick it up later."

" _Okay. I'll leave it under a shipment for Alison Church. I'll go see if I can find more evidence from the other scenes._ "

"Right. We'll talk tomorrow."

" _Not at my home, though. Jenny's going to be pissed for the next couple of weeks. Oh, um, are you feeling any better?_ " The line went dead on Batman's end. " _Hello?_ "


	14. Chapter Thirteen

After Batman took down the Penguin, my car was impounded as evidence since several pounds of explosives were found inside and the investigation was ongoing. I ended up having to rely on public transportation. Overall, taking the bus and train was surprisingly relaxing. It was nice to devote my mental resources from paying attention to the road to catching up on current events or studying chemical formulas. (Or, of course, taking a nap.)

It was two days after I had given Batman a concussion and Jackie had come home from her strange night on the town with the masked men. This morning, I had some flash cards to go through, but I was severely distracted by the passengers. For one thing, they were chatting. Gotham City residents don't like talking to strangers for fear of being mugged. For another, several people were quickly flipping through newspapers so they could trade them around.

I read the paper over the shoulder of the person in front of me. It was an article with the headline: "Is Batman On His Way Out?" I scoffed at that – he was out for one night, maybe two, and that was not my fault – until I read the sub heading. "Tex offers Gotham a change of pace." Hold up.

Tex?

The man folded his paper shut so I could see the front page. Gracing the entire page above the fold was Tex's metal face, her red eyes blazing in fury, and one fist just about to punch out the cameraman. The headline: "Tex: Gotham's New Protector." Below the fold was an article and even more pictures of her. The other competing local newspaper looked pretty much the same – they just used different pictures. Just Tex being generally … awesome.

I focused even more on my flash cards so my reactions wouldn't give away that I knew anything about her. Actually, the papers hadn't really decided whether Tex was male or female, so I would just have to think as Tex as an It for now. It is annoying when I have to know how much I should or shouldn't know.

I got off at the train station stop along with most of the other passengers. In the confusion, I stole a paper from under another gentleman's arm and hurried away with it. When I found a seat, I opened my paper and read the first of several articles.

Yesterday afternoon, and anonymous source posted a video online of a disguised vigilante beating up criminals and robbers. This hero clad in what looked like leather pants and jacket, a steel head, and lit up red glass eyes, was vicious and terrifying. This same source alerted the local news outlets to other sightings all over the world. So far, they had identified genuine sightings in Uruguay, Singapore, Georgia, Egypt, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Columbia, Latvia, Sierra Leone, Botswana, Pakistan, and Shri Lanka. They had already covered half of the places _I_ knew about, and I was pretty sure I was still missing some locations. Jackie never stayed put in one country for very long; usually less than two weeks. Sometimes she didn't have a chance to let me know where she was.

The trip to Wayne Enterprises only took five minutes. Because repairing the damage Batman did to the lightrail trains had been Mr. Wayne's pet project, there was a station right at the building that led to the third floor. I took the elevator up to my office, sharing the car with four other people either reading newspapers or watching a newscast on their smartphones.

My office was buzzing with chatter, more so than usual, and all of it was about Tex. I sat down at my desk, and two of my coworkers immediately demanded my attention. "We need you two settle a dispute," said Luis Vasquez.

His friend, Maria Walker, clarified. "I think Tex is a guy, and he thinks Tex is a girl."

"How do you want me to resolve this?" I asked. I needed a reason to justify telling Luis he was right.

"You could flip a coin," said Mary.

"No," Luis argued. Then he borrowed my computer to look for a video on YouTube. "Watch this and tell us what you think."

"And why does my opinion matter more than anyone else's?" This could not become a habit.

"You know, you're smart," Mary answered. "Just watch the movie."

The video in question was called _Tex: Vigilante of Gotham City_ , and was accompanied by a heavy metal soundtrack. It began with Tex taking out two robbers in a gas station, then introducing herself as Tex. Then it really got going. The clips were taken from low quality security cameras from various crimes Tex had stopped around the city. The criminals didn't seem to stand a chance against her iron fist, and if she did get shot, that didn't even slow her down.

That was only the first minute or so. The bulk of the video was of a single fight inside a bank. This had to have been taken two nights ago. It was easily her most impressive fight since these guys posed an actual threat. What was impressive was the multiple camera angles. No, not more security cameras. The footage was taken from the points of view of the combatants. Jackie did mention they had cameras in their masks.

"So?" Mary looked at me expectantly when the video ended, as did Luis.

"30,000 hits overnight? That's impressive. Who is this user?" I clicked on his name: 7h3 R!dd13r. He had been active for three days, and had posted 50 different videos. From what I could glance at, they were the unedited footage of Tex. I clicked on one from the bank.

"What do you think? What is Tex?" said Luis.

"A little more hype than substance," I replied.

"I mean what gender?"

"Oh. Definitely female, for sure. Tex has a small frame, wide hips, and breasts. They're small, but they're there."

"Ha! I told you! You owe me lunch."

Mary sulked away, Luis followed, mocking her, and I got back to work. Since Mr. Wayne was out with the flu yesterday, I had cleared his schedule for the week. I didn't have a whole lot to do except figure out what else Gotham knew about Tex. The first place to start was with the source: 7h3 R!dd13r.

There were only two problems with this. One, I know next to nothing about computers, so the most I discovered was that he listed his name as The Riddler. No surprise there. The second: One minute into my search, my computer screen froze up, and then went blank. My computer didn't turn off, but instead went to a white screen with a black cursor blinking in the middle of the page.

"Oooookay… This looks like an IT sort of thing."

Just when I was reaching for the phone, a male voice from the computer said, "Do not turn off your computer, and do not attempt to call IT." I literally jumped out of my chair. "Their phones are disconnected, and you have all been locked in."

The entire office turned and looked at me. I dialed IT anyway and found my phone absent of a dial tone. "Somebody to go down to IT!" I ordered.

A few people went to the elevators to summon them, but the lights were out and they didn't respond. Someone else went to try the stairs, but that door was electronically locked. Mrs. Miller even went to Mr. Wayne's office to give his private elevator a try. "It's no good," she said. "It's not working."

I looked back at my computer. Above the cursor was a line of text that said, _Have a seat, Jenny._

All of a sudden, everyone else's computers did nearly the same thing, except their screens were replaced with a Guy Fawkes mask overlaying a green question mark on a black screen. Whoever was doing this was proving he really did have control over our floor, possibly even the entire building.

_Have a seat, Jenny._

What other choice did I have? I had to play along. I slipped my phone out of my pocket and sat down.

 _Thank you._ "If you're trying to call the police, I wouldn't bother. They can't help you."

So he could see me. I didn't have a webcam, so that meant he was using something else to watch me. Keeping my eyes on my computer, I asked, "Mrs. Miller, do the security cameras in this building capture sound?"

"No, they don't have that capability." She still hadn't left Mr. Wayne's office, which has no cameras.

I made a show of picking up my phone, showing it to the camera behind me, and throwing it as far away from me as possible. Coincidentally, it landed right at Mrs. Miller's feet. "Do not leave that room under any circumstances," I ordered her. I made sure my face was away from the camera so he couldn't see me talking. "He can't see you in there. Call Mr. Wayne and let him know what's going on. Then call my sister."

"I have to congratulate Bruce Wayne on his security system. If it hadn't been for that bomb, I never would have gotten in. Even then, it was difficult, and I don't have all the passwords I want."

I took a piece of printer paper and wrote, "Who are you?" in sharpie, then held it up.

"Feel free to type your responses," my computer said. "How silly of me. I didn't introduce myself. I am The Riddler."

That name got quite a few reactions from the office because they all knew who posted the Tex content online. Since their computers were useless, most of them came to my computer and gathered around my desk. _The same one who leaked Tex to the news?_ I typed.

He chuckled. "The one and the same. What did you think of my music video?"

_Poor choice in music. Next time, look up Red vs. Blue._

"Well, I've never made one before. Maybe you'd like to make a better one?"

_Not really. Tex isn't that impressive._

"Is that so? Are you wondering why I'm called The Riddler?"

"If you make me answer riddles, I will strangle you through the computer," I muttered. _Let me guess: You like to tell riddles._

"You think you're clever, Jenny? I'll give you a chance to save your company – _if_ whoever has just called Wayne hangs up."

 _It's no one on our floor._ If he could track cell phone calls in the building, there's no way he could trace them vertically. "Mrs. Miller? Call Jackie. She's on my speed dial. Tell her, 'There's a séance in Merripit House.' She'll understand." _What do you want me to do?_

"I have five riddles for you. Solve all of them, and you save your company. Answer one or more wrong, and I fry the collective hard drives of Wayne Enterprises, destroying years of research."

"Why? Why would he bother to give me a chance? What does he get out of destroying Wayne Enterprises?"

"Mr. Wayne has been alerted and Jackie says that she's on her way," said Mrs. Miller.

"Good. Then we can't lose." _Alright. I'll do it._

The first riddle appeared on the screen along with a text box for my answer.

_I have keys, but open no locks, space, but no room, and you can enter, but not go in. What am I?_

"Are you sure about this?" said Mary.

"Aren't you the one who said I was smart?" I replied.

"Shoo, people," the Riddler said. "Jenny doesn't get any help."

I don't need it anyhow. The crowd moved away from me and kept their mouths shut. "Someone ask the Riddler if there's a time limit."

One of the interns held a paper up to the camera with my question on it. The Riddler chuckled. "Already having difficulty?"

I typed in my answer to show him I wasn't intimidated in the least. _A keyboard._ I hit Enter triumphantly.

"Very good, but I was starting easy. Don't get cocky."

_I have a heart that never beats. I have a home, but never sleep. I can take a man's house and build another's. I love to play games with my many brothers. I am a king among fools. Who am I?_

"Hold up the sign again," I told the intern. "I want to know how long I've got."

"Why?" said Tiffany, one of the secretaries for a board member.

"I want to give the police time to get here."

The Riddler considered an answer. "I'll give you three minutes to answer the rest of the riddles. Does that sound fair?"

Jackie would appreciate this particular riddle because she considers herself a sort of Jack(ie) of Hearts. _King of Hearts._ "Tell him yes, I'm fine with the terms."

_I have many feathers to help me fly. I have a body and head, but I'm not alive. It is your strength which determines how far I go. You can hold me in your hand, but I'm never thrown. What am I?_

"Is three minutes enough time?" Mrs. Miller asked.

I tapped my keyboard absently while I thought of the answer. "For the police, no. For me, it should be. These ones have been easy. What flies besides birds? No, don't answer that. A birdie? No, those are thrown in the air at some point. It has to be something in a sport. A baseball has no feathers. Ah! Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana." _An Arrow._

"You are clever," said the Riddler. "Or have you just heard all of these before?" I shook my head. "This one will hurt your brain."

_Five hundred begins it. Five hundred ends it. Five in the middle is seen. First of all letters, first of all numbers take up their stations in between. Join all together and then you will bring before you the name of an eminent king._

"Now this is getting interesting. This is an actual puzzle. It's a name, so each part is a letter. Five hundred, five … got to be roman numerals." I got out a pen and notebook. V is five, which goes in the middle. I was rusty on my roman numerals, so I left the five hundreds for now. Beginning of letters, that's A. As for the figures, he must mean numbers, so that's one, or I.

_AVI_

I could keep guessing at names of kings with five letters – Henry, Louis, James, Edgar – or I could figure out what letter I'm missing. I is 1, V is 5, X is 10, L is 50 … Alright, what does the date on the statue of liberty look like? MCLLXV … I don't know. Wait, there's a D in there. If M is 1,000, then D has to be 500.

_DAVID_

"You're quick, and you have two minutes left. I'd better give you a clock." A two minute timer appeared on my screen. "Last one."

_The wind blows and the sun rises at 9 a.m. It is now 10 a.m. What color was the wind and sun at 9?_

This one stumped me for a minute. I wasted sixty seconds watching the clock tick away because the question made no sense to me. The tension in the office was heavy. I wanted to look like I was procrastinating to give us some more time, but the truth was that I was turning the answer over in my mind.

Color? It can't be literal because the wind is clear and the sun is white. What does an hour difference have to do with anything? Could it possibly be a play on words? Or maybe he means 9 p.m. the previous night. No, or else the first 9 a.m. wouldn't have been mentioned. All that's really changed is that now it's later. At 9, the wind blows. At 8, the wind will blow. At 10, the wind blew.

Oh. The tense has changed. The wind blew and the sun rose. _The wind was BLUE and the sun was ROSE._ I didn't like the answer because that was kind of stretching it. Word-play puzzles are always a bit tricky.

The screen went blank and the Riddler was silent. That was five riddles, all answered correctly. Presumably. If he would just give me an affirmative answer, I would be happy.

"Correct," said the Riddler, breaking the tension. "I have never had anyone answer all five riddles before. Congratulations. As a bonus, here's another riddle."

"Is he just going to keep asking them until you get one wrong?" Mrs. Miller said with horror in her voice.

_What demands an answer, but never asks a question?_

A second later, my phone rang. I picked it up and answered it. "Well that was a dead giveaway, wasn't it," I said. "Not that I needed it."

"Oh, good, you got it. I'm just about ready to let you go. I just need one thing from you."

"Those passwords you couldn't get earlier."

"How did you know?"

"I'm not just good at riddles. I don't have access to those passwords, and even if I did, I wouldn't give them to you."

"But you don't even know which ones I want. The Research and Development Department is defunct and useless. No one will miss it."

"It belongs to Mr. Wayne, so the answer is no." If he would do a simple Google search on me, he would know that I wouldn't give in to the Penguin either, so there's no point in bothering me.

"I think I may have underestimated you, Jenny. If you change your mind, you can reach me –"

Suddenly, all the power in the building was cut. All the lights and computers went out, and the line went dead. "Riddler? Riddler? Hello?" I slammed the phone back into its cradle in defeat. A lead on this man would have been so helpful right now.

Someone called my cell phone and Mrs. Miller answered it. "It's Jackie. She wants to know if you're okay."

"Toss it here." She threw my phone to me as she left the office and I caught it. "Jackie, was that you?" I snapped.

"Depends. What is 'that'?"

"You cut the power right as the Riddler was about to give me a way to contact him! It would have been a major lead for –" Not for her. Jackie wasn't involved in the Riddler case. Tex was. "For the police."

"You shouldn't be worrying about that. That's for the police and Batman. Firemen are on their way to get you all out of the building. Are you okay?"

"Yes, I'm fine. We're all fine. The police and firemen are coming to get us out," I announced to the rest of the office. They all cheered, giving me a moment of noise to slip Jackie a message. "I need you to write a letter to Sherlock, see if we can meet somewhere in Dartmoor." I went inside Mr. Wayne's office and closed the door most of the way.

"Wait, I thought you were Sherlock Holmes."

"Do I need to write out the code? Who do you think I'm talking about?"

Jackie gulped. "I don't know if I can. We kind of just find each other." A couple moments of silence later, she said, "I'll see what I can do. Don't bring any bats."


	15. Chapter Fourteen

It took a lot of effort for Batman to not break into Jackie's apartment and demand to know how exactly she became a Gotham phenomenon. Fortunately, she did want to meet with him. He called her, but didn't get a chance to get a word in. "I need to see you as soon as possible," she said right off the bat. "There's a parking garage on 9th and Colonial that's pretty empty. I'll be there whenever you can show up."

True to her word, there she was. Jackie was waiting on the top level dressed in her armor, but with her helmet off, her hair was braided over her left shoulder, and she was leaning on the concrete wall that overlooked the street below. The level was nearly empty except for a couple of beat up cars and one rental.

Batman sneaked onto the level and stood in the shadows twenty feet away from her. "Tex," he growled, making her jump.

She spun around. "Batman, I'm so glad you came. Today has just been … You look slightly more pissed off than usual."

"You've been sloppy. I don't have time to babysit an amateur. The stunts you pulled were dangerous and could have gotten someone killed. You never fire a weapon at anyone, even with the safety on! And what did breaking a vial with a potentially fatal disease inside accomplish?"

"The gun wasn't even loaded correctly, and I knew the vial was just saline. I would never put anyone in danger by doing anything stupid like that."

"You shouldn't even be taking a chance!"

Jackie was trying her best to retain her composure. "Batman, look at me. You're about eight feet tall and I'm about five and a quarter. You just have to stand there, and people will look at you and tremble in fear. You growl, and they go running. People look at me and say, 'Who's the freak in the superhero costume?' I do not have the strength you have. I have to be intimidating through other means. Tex is someone who takes those risks. I just kind of got lost in the character the other night."

"Do not even think of wearing that suit if you can't control Tex," he snarled.

"Is that what happened to you?" a new voice echoed through the garage. Jenny approached them from the other end of the garage, looking smug in jeans, a t-shirt, and sneakers. "Three years ago, four cops and a DA died, and you, Batman, mysteriously disappeared for six months or so. Did your character get out of hand?" She stopped at a midpoint 15 feet away from Batman and Jackie, forming a triangle.

"Jenny wanted to talk to you specifically," said Jackie, "so I brought her along."

Batman turned his full attention on her. He was still a little miffed about the incident a couple nights ago. "What about?"

"I work for a company called Wayne Enterprises, which I'm sure you already knew after doing a complete background check on me. Today, we were attacked by a hacker that managed to get a hard-line connection after the Penguin's bomb weakened the security system. He called himself The Riddler, and admitted to leaking the footage of Tex. He threatened to wipe all our hard drives if I didn't answer five riddles correctly."

"Is he the same Riddler that posted –"

"The videos of Jackie? He said so himself."

"Then that means he's the one who orchestrated the burglaries two nights ago. Was it just you that he spoke to?"

"So far as I know, yes. I think it's because I work directly under Mr. Wayne, and he was unavailable. When I solved the riddles, he wanted me to get him security codes or passwords he hadn't been able to crack. That's when Jackie cut the power to the building and I lost contact with him. He hasn't tried to contact me since."

"How did you cut the power?" he asked Jackie.

"With some bolt cutters. And maybe a blow torch," she sheepishly admitted.

"Why didn't you just flip the master switch?" Jenny asked.

"I panicked."

Jenny sighed and continued. "I made some calls, and at least two other companies suffered a similar attack later in the day. I don't think any of them were able to solve the riddles, and they've been trying to keep quiet about whatever happened to them. I don't know what the Riddler has done to hurt them, but it has to be something significant because they've all shut down as they're trying to fix the damage. I know Wayne Enterprises has been trying to cover it up with a power outage story or something as we try to fix what was broken. Right now, we're trying to patch holes, but I think the Riddler could have done worse."

"That could be how he broke in to the other places. He hacked the security systems of those three companies and the others just walked in. Are you sure that he got nothing from Wayne Enterprises?"

"Well … no. Here's the thing, though. He gave me a chance to solve riddles and save the company. Why didn't he just wipe everything when he had the chance? Or just go digging and find the passwords himself? He definitely could have devastated us, but he gave me the opportunity to thwart him."

"Maybe he couldn't, or he was stalling for time. It could be his calling card."

"I think it's more than that. He wasn't just playing with us. It was like he _had_ to, like it was some sort of compulsion."

"The Riddler," said Jackie. "Exactly what it says on the tin."

"Jackie, favor?" Jenny asked. "Could you … go downstairs for about five minutes?"

Jackie's eyebrows shot up three inches and her gaze darted between her sister and Batman. "The last time you two were alone, well, that didn't end well." She looked to Batman for his opinion, and he nodded once. "Okay. I'm not burying any bodies. Behave." Then she jumped over the ledge and landed on the level below, and repeated as necessary to get to the ground level.

Jenny and Batman eyed each other for several moments, sizing each other up. Finally Jenny broke the silence. "I don't like you."

"So I gathered."

"But Jackie does. She used to cut articles and pictures out of the newspaper about you and keep them in a scrapbook. You were her hero. Then she disappeared, the Joker attacked Gotham, and you killed a few people. When she came back, I thought she was going to be heartbroken when she found out what you did, but she surprised me. She refused to read the newspapers, said everyone was lying, and suddenly left the country to go _be_ you. Jackie has done some good work abroad under the name of Tex.

"The problem I have is that _you_ are her role model. I cannot feel comfortable with the fact that my sister is trying to emulate a murderer. Jackie follows two simple rules that she says she got from you. One, do not kill. Two, do not allow others to be hurt or killed. If she knows someone needs help, she has to step in or else she feels she becomes just as guilty as the offending party. Very simple, very stressful. You, on the other hand, pretend to play by those rules, but when they become inconvenient, you ignore them. I don't care what your reasons were for killing those cops or Harvey Dent. You have no excuse, no right to play judge, jury, and executioner. It's bad enough that you play your own version of the police force."

"Those cops were dirty. There was no other course of action," he lied.

"You do not have the right to decide that! We give that job to judges, police men, congressmen – to the _law_ you pretend to uphold. And I'm not just talking about those cops. You remember the Scarecrow attacks? That train you destroyed had someone on it, burned beyond recognition. Funny that you jumped off without a scratch and he did not. I don't know exactly what happened on that train, but I will say this: if someone is killed because you deliberately failed to act, that is murder. It is not neglect, and it is inexcusable."

"I understand that, Ms. Harkness."

"And furthermore, you may think that you're helping the police by doing their job for them, but you're coddling them. We are never going to have a competent police force if you keep taking the law into your own hands! You are forcing your own, twisted moral code onto the city instead of letting society figure out what that should be."

"I am not the law. I pick up what the law can't handle. I am vengeance. I am the night."

Jenny threw her hands up. "I get it. You're the Batman. I will let this little arrangement stand for now. Despite all appearances to the contrary, Jackie can be brilliant, and I trust her judgment. If she thinks that she should be working with you, I won't get in her way. I won't even look too closely at what the two of you are doing. But I swear, if she gets hurt, I will figure out who you are under that cowl, and I _will_ ruin you." With that, Jenny turned on her toe and walked away.

At this point, Batman wasn't sure which Harkness he should be more worried about. The one everyone knew, or the one who knew everyone. He jumped off the ledge and glided down.

On the ground level, Jackie found the Tumbler II. She stood a couple feet away from it, just staring at its hull. "Tex?" Batman said.

He briefly shook her out of her trance. "Huh? Oh, how did it go?"

"Fine. Just tell her to use a bat next time."

"Okay." After a long pause, Jackie said, "I never actually thought I'd see one of these in person, especially not after the last one got destroyed."

"I've had the Tumbler II for about two years. I just don't use it as much as I do the Batpod."

"Batman …"

He knew exactly where this conversation was heading. "No."

"What if I promise not to touch anything?"

"No."

"Five minutes at most?"

"Still no."

"Okay. Can I just hug it then?"

"What?"

"Can't stop me!" She suddenly wrapped her arms – or tried to – around the armored plates of the Tumbler II. "Oh, it's just beautiful! I bet you could drop an atom bomb on her and this baby wouldn't even notice!"

"The last one did." This was starting to get more than awkward. "Alright, that's enough."

"I wish I could afford one of these," she said as she pulled away. "I'd probably only drive it twice, though. How fast can she go?"

"Forget it, Tex. You're not driving it."

"But I only want a ride! It's not like I'll break it or anything. Well, not permanently. I can't say I have the best luck with heavy machinery, but I can fix anything."

"That's not the point. The Tumbler isn't a toy." He pressed a button on the key fob, and the top of the Tumbler II opened up for the Batman to climb in.

Jackie peeked inside and gasped. "It's even more beautiful than I imagined on the inside! Like a TARDIS!"

"The Commissioner wants to meet you. One hour, roof of the police station. Don't be late." With that, he closed the cockpit and sped away, barely missing a fiercely jealous Jackie.

* * *

Commissioner Jim Gordon stood on the roof of the police department taking a well-deserved, and well-timed, coffee break. It was a good place to think over cases, especially when certain Bats tended to drop by. He heard the flutter of a cape before he heard the footsteps of Batman's heavy combat boots. "You're not usually so prompt," said Gordon.

"The city's unusually quiet tonight." Batman appeared from the shadows to stand behind Gordon. Most of the security cameras on the roof had been 'accidentally broken' or gone on the fritz at one point or another, and the police department just hadn't found the funding to fix them, so Batman was confident he would have several minutes before he would have to run.

"Could it be the new girl is doing more than her share?" he said a little sarcastically.

Batman leaped down to Gordon's level. "Tex is still a novelty. They'll start testing her patience soon enough."

"Where do you think she got a name like that? It's not remotely intimidating."

"That's something you'll have to ask her."

"Speaking of which, where is she?"

" _Right here_." A hand appeared over the roof's ledge, waved at them, and then was followed by the rest of Tex as she pulled herself up. " _Evening Commissioner_."

"Subtle," said Gordon.

" _He won't lend me a grappling gun_ ," she said, indicating Batman, " _and then he tells me to meet him on the roof. Lucky for you, I know how to climb walls_." Tex drew herself up to her full height to stand up to him, but he was still a good six inches taller than her. " _What would you like to know?_ "

Gordon sized her up, but was still unimpressed. " _You_ beat up eleven men at once?"

" _Yeah. So?_ " Tex crossed her arms defensively.

"Nothing, I just thought you'd be … taller."

" _The camera adds ten pounds. And the boots sometimes add three inches._ "

"So you can climb up buildings six stories tall, beat grown men to a bloody pulp, and crush guns with your bare hands. What else can you do?"

" _I'm really good at fixing computers for some reason. I can also dance, play the piano, and knit._ "

"Why did you choose your particular costume?"

" _I didn't choose it. I sort of came by it, and it's kept me alive for three years. My helmet can track heat signatures, see through stuff like an x-ray machine, catch and broadcast most radio transmissions, target moving objects, enhance my sight, and scramble my voice. Overall, my armor is more bulletproof than Kevlar and helps me avoid detection by radar._ "

"Really. What's it made out of?"

" _I have no idea. Somebody else built it and gave it to me because they thought I was accident prone. Turns out they were right._ "

"How old are you?"

" _Twenty-five_."

Batman raised an eyebrow at this, but said nothing. Jenny was twenty-three, and Jackie was supposed to be twenty-one, but she was most likely lying to the Commissioner. Without any facial cues and with most of the verbal ones scrambled, he couldn't be sure. On top of that, the Commissioner had never been as probing with him, and he hadn't been nearly as open as Tex.

"How long have you been a vigilante?" Gordon continued.

Tex paused a moment to consider her answer. " _I don't really think of myself as a vigilante. I'm just someone who's trying to do the right thing and keep people from being hurt or killed. Sometimes that means I have to get violent, but I try to find alternate solutions first._ "

"How do you feel about capital punishment?"

" _I don't like it. I don't think it's up to us to decide who lives and who dies._ "

"Would you ever kill someone in self defense?"

" _Absolutely not. I'm really good at taking bullets meant for me or other people. Batman's seen me take one to the back of my head._ " She knocked on her helmet for emphasis.

"Alright, those are some good answers. One last one; would you let a murderer walk the streets freely?"

Tex shook her head. " _Of course not. I'd try to bring him to you._ "

"Then why haven't you tried to stop the Batman?"

The question surprised Tex more than it did anyone else. " _Commissioner, Batman's never killed anyone. You were there. Harvey Dent killed those cops and threatened to kill your son._ "

"How do you know that?" Gordon's demeanor went from mildly amused to calm, but furious. The change wasn't drastic, but it was noticeable.

Tex put up both her hands. " _Easy. I have some good sources that I can't divulge. I looked into the Joker attacks very, very carefully and decided that there was no way he could have killed anyone. He was in the wrong place too many times, but Harvey Dent was in the right ones._ "

"What sources?" he demanded.

She shook her head. " _No can do, Commissioner. But judging from your reaction, I'd say they're pretty spot-on. So, am –_ " She suddenly stopped and looked towards the door into the station. " _Someone's coming_!"

Tex and Batman immediately hid – she by hanging off the edge of the roof by her fingers, and he by ducking behind an air duct. An officer burst out the door a moment later. "Commissioner, we've got a problem! You're needed in your office!"

"What is it?" he said impatiently.

"Some guy calling himself the Riddler hacked our computers and he wants to talk to you."

Once the detective and the Commissioner had gone back inside, Batman jumped out from his hiding place and helped Tex pull herself back up. There was a high pitched screech in his ear coming from the police scanner, and he hurried to shut it off. "The Riddler's already shutting off their communications. How good are you at riddles?"

" _I think now is a good time to tell you all the brains in the family went to Jenny and skimped out on me. What about you?_ "

"Only child." He tied the end of a grappling line around her waist. "I need you to be my eyes and mouth."

" _I don't think I like where this is heading._ "

"Just read me the riddle, I'll give you the answer, and you tell Gordon." He pulled her over to a different part of the roof and pushed her off.

" _Wait, hey!_ " The line slowed her descent until she was hanging upside-down in front of the Commissioner's office. " _I hate you so much right now._ " Her helmet hit the window as she was trying to straighten herself up, alerting the men inside. Gordon was at his computer with his back to her so she could see the screen. A couple other detectives had been standing behind him, reading the text, before they heard Tex. They cracked open the window. " _Hi. What's up?_ "

They gave her a strange look. "Are you Tex?"

" _Yep._ " She read the first riddle, then motioned for Batman to pull her up. " _What is put onto a table cut, but never eaten?_ "

"A pack of cards."

He lowered her down to the window again. " _Want a hint?_ "

"Is that Batman up there?" the other detective asked her.

" _No. That is my friend … Flying Mouse Man. The answer's-_ "

"A pack of cards," said Gordon. "I got it. This one has me stumped, though. What falls, but never breaks, and what breaks, but never falls?"

Once again, Batman pulled Tex up to give her the answer, and then lowered her back down to give it to Gordon. " _Nightfall, daybreak._ "

"Thanks. Alright, next riddle. I am six letters long. Take away one, and I am twelve."

Batman started to pull her up, but she caught the edge of the window and pulled herself back down. " _Nope. I'm done with this game_ _._ " She climbed into the office with a little bit of help from the detectives, and untied herself from the wire.

"Ah, Tex," said the computer. "It's good to see you again! Did you like the little music video I made of you?"

" _Haven't seen it._ " She motioned for Gordon to vacate his chair so she could take it. Then she picked up the computer tower and set it on the desk. " _I need a USB cord and a knife_ _._ "

"What kind?" Gordon pulled a few out of a desk drawer and held up a couple choices of USB cords: one for a camera, and one for an mp3 player. Tex snatched the one for the camera.

"Tex? What are you doing?" the Riddler asked patronizingly. "You have no idea how to even use one of these things."

" _Okay, where's the camera? This guy's getting annoying._ "

"I got it," said one of the detectives. He took one of the chairs and stood on that so he was tall enough to unplug the camera. "That should do it."

"Well now you're not playing fair," the Riddler whined.

A detective handed Tex his 3 inch long bladed pocketknife. " _Gentlemen, what you are about to see will freak you out a little bit. I haven't even told … Flying Mouse Man._ " Then she rolled up her sleeve and proceeded to slit her left wrist open. This would have been horrifying, except there wasn't any blood. Upon taking a closer look, Gordon saw that she had carefully separated two sections of skin on her wrist. On one side of the knife was her real skin, and on the other was something that looked more like plastic. At a first glance, it looked like she had a very strange tan line, but it was actually two different pieces of flesh connecting almost seamlessly. Tex used the knife to gently pull her skin away from her wrist like she was pulling off a glove. " _Questions?_ "

"That is disgusting," said the other detective.

" _Questions, not criticisms._ " She plugged one end of the USB cord into that wrist, and the other into the computer. " _And no, I am not a Terminator._ "

"Are both your hands robotic?" Gordon confirmed.

Tex nodded. " _They only go down just past my wrist, so the only super-strength I have is whatever I can crush in my fist._ "

"So then why are you plugging your hand in?"

" _There's a sort of AI program that helps run my hands. It should be able to override the Riddler's program, or at least push him out._ " She got to work on the keyboard. Whatever the Riddler had put on the screen disappeared and was replaced by a black screen quickly filling up with characters. " _Okay. Now, with the magic of my uber l33t haxxor skilz, I will build you guys a new firewall._ "

"How long will that take?"

" _Normally a few days or a couple weeks. In this case, though, I'll just copy and paste the one I already have stored. I love my hand. It's so handy. Oh look. He didn't think I could trace the signal back to him. Aaaand … got it._ " Tex wrote down an address, ripped the cord out of her wrist, and raced out the window.

Batman was already hanging by the window. He grabbed Tex as she leaped out and carried her down to the ground. "Where's the Riddler?"

" _I'll take you there. Follow me."_

* * *

Tex drove her bike to an apartment building that sat right next to Gotham City College's School of Computer Engineering building on the edge of campus. Batman was right behind her, carefully avoiding the street lights and pedestrians. They hid their respective bikes behind some overgrown bushes and approached the building. " _Which one is he in?_ "

"You said your helmet could see through walls."

" _Yeah, it can pretty much do anything._ " She swept her eyes over the building. " _Huh. That's odd._ "

"They're empty."

" _Yeah. I could have sworn he was right here, and we got here faster than he could have run. There isn't even any leftover heat or sign that the electricity's been used_ _._ "

"He's using the college's equipment and internet connection. That's student housing, but it's closed for renovations this semester. He could have used that building as his spoofed location, but would need the equipment from the college. Let's start there."

" _What if he didn't stick around?_ "

"If having people solve riddles is a compulsion for him as your sister said, then he has to make us finish his puzzles. Even if he's not here, he'll be coming for us."

" _How does he know we left?_ "

"He was watching the police station. Chances are he's also been following the traffic cameras."

Tex shivered, and Batman noticed. " _I feel like I'm back in London. I know cameras are supposed to keep us safe, but … I don't like being watched all the time._ "

"It's only going to get worse. Come on. The Riddler must be this way."

The two of them entered the building through the main entrance and found themselves in a cafeteria/lobby sort of place. Tex tried scanning the building, but to no avail. " _Too much interference. Let's try for a computer lab. I think there's one this way._ "

They headed towards the stairs, but stopped in their tracks when a familiar voice echoed across the lobby. "Tex, you made it! And so did Batman. I thought we could finish our little riddle game here." Batman took several batarangs from his belt and got ready to throw them while Tex scanned the room furiously searching for the source.

Smoke exploded in the room, and when it cleared, a man in a green suit stood on one of the tables. He carried a cane with a heavy jeweled end, wore a green bowler hat, and had a _V for Vendetta_ Guy Fawkes mask tied over his face. Tex took a step forward, but Batman put out an arm to stop her. "In a minute. What do you want, Riddler?"

"I just told you." He stepped off of the table. "I want to play a game, but not in the _Saw_ sort of way. I think we were at, 'I am six letters long. Take one away, and I am twelve. What am I?' Do you have an answer yet, Tex?"

Tex turned to Batman. " _I got nothing. What do you have?_ "

"Dozens," he growled.

" _Dozens of what? Oh. Can we hit him now?_ "

"I wanted _Tex_ to answer!" the Riddler screamed. "Were you just born without brains or something, Tex?"

" _Actually—_ " Tex stopped when Batman put up his arm again. " _Why did you hack into the police's computer systems? What could you possibly hope to gain from that?_ "

"Ah, now there's a good riddle." He knelt down on the table. "Why in the world do I do what I do? Apart from, you know, weakening my enemies in a place that they don't know is vulnerable. People don't know how much a cyber-terrorist can hurt them. Did you know that one worm nearly caused a nuclear catastrophe in Iran simply by infecting the systems that monitored the centrifuge? See, all it takes is for someone to rely too much on a computer to do its job right. The computer says everything's okay, but what's really going on is the centrifuge is not stirring the materials consistently, and that's dangerous."

"You were trying to ruin Gotham's police force from the inside. You shut down their cyber infrastructure, a few inmates get loose, and then no one trusts the police to do their jobs right."

"Yes! Exactly, Batman! Why did I peg Tex as the one with smarts?"

She shrugged. " _No one else does. Thing is, no one trusts the police anyway. That's why they grudgingly let the two of us run loose. Plus, the GCPD usually do things old-school. You wouldn't have done much. Just like every other cyber-terrorist in the history of man. We don't rely on our computers enough for cyber-terrorists to, well, terrorize us. There wasn't a disaster in Iran because the virus was caught in time, and that mostly served as a warning to the rest of the nuclear power plant operators to upgrade their security systems or not buy pirated parts. Apart from that, what can you do to scare us?_ " She noticed that the Riddler and Batman were both staring at her, at least as far as she could tell. " _What? I was reading about it when it was happening in 2010. Also, the Stuxnet worm only infected one type of German hardware that had been smuggled into Iran._ "

"Either way," Batman interrupted. "What you did was illegal. I'm taking you in."

"You wouldn't hit a _nerd_ , would you?"

Batman unleashed his batarangs, but the Riddler dodged each one of them in turn, knocking a few away with his cane. While Batman did that, Tex sprinted to his table, jumped off a chair, and aimed a solid kick at his neck, but he was still just as fast. He back-flipped off the table and managed to hit Tex in the jaw with his cane. The Batman rushed him, swinging several weighted punches directly at his head, but the man was just too fast.

The Riddler chuckled as he eluded Batman's attacks. "I should probably mention that nerds like me love ninja movies almost as much as we like Linux. Hiya!" He swung his cane at Batman's stomach, and nearly got the Dark Knight to double over in pain. Tex attempted to tackle him, but he jumped out of the way just in time for her to hit Batman right in the solar plexus.

As the two of them attempted to untangle themselves, the Riddler shot a grappling cable to the ceiling that pulled him up. A scrap of paper fell from the sky as he pulled himself out through the skylight. Tex caught the paper. " _Why do they need a skylight in the first place?_ " she asked as she looked at it.

But Batman was having none of it. While Tex pondered the riddle on the paper, Batman grabbed her arm with one hand and shot his grappling cable after the Riddler with the other. Three seconds later, he threw her through the skylight so she could chase the man in the green suit across the roof. This he did not seem to expect as Tex was able to tackle him by his knees and bring him down.

Batman caught up a second later when the Riddler had managed to wriggle out of Tex's grasp. He hit Tex in the head with his cane, but she barely noticed. She returned her own punch, but he was just out of reach. Batman caught the Riddler's cane in a fist, and when the Riddler tried to yank it back, he opened himself up for a fist to his face. The Guy Fawkes mask went flying off the edge of the roof.

The Riddler screamed and hid his face with his hands. "No! My face! Not my beautiful face!" He was nearly on the verge of tears, as well as the verge of the roof. Tex paused, taken off guard by this. Batman wasn't nearly so fooled. He had one fist raised, ready to pummel him. Then, the Riddler turned the waterworks off, and started to laugh. "Oh, wait. Here it is." He pulled his hands away and gave the two of them a sick smile showing off every last one of his white teeth. He had dark brown hair, a white face, sharp cheekbones, and crazed green eyes. The Riddler took two steps back. "A man is getting closer and closer to a field. However, if he touches it, he is dead. Why is that?"

"Tex, catch him!" Batman ordered.

The two of them lunged for him, but the Riddler simply took another step back and fell off the roof, laughing all the way. Tex grabbed at air only to see that his grappling cable was slowing his descent. " _We can still get him!_ " Batman tossed her his grappling gun and then jumped off after him. His fall was slowed by his cape that stretched out like giant bat wings behind him.

The Riddler had an accomplice waiting with a car. He unhooked himself from his cable as soon as he hit the ground and made for his getaway vehicle. Batman was right on his tail, and the Riddler couldn't run fast enough to avoid a swift take-down. The two of them tangled on the ground, each of them trying to punch out the other. The Batman seemed to be winning this one until the accomplice stepped out of the car with a machine gun in hand and fired at Batman.

That was when Tex hit the ground and ran directly at the machine gun fire. She took a few bullets meant for Batman, and managed to pull the gun out of his hands and hit him across the face. The Riddler used this moment to kick Batman off and get in a couple blows to his jaw with his cane. Batman had to back off to avoid any risk of a second concussion, and the Riddler scrambled to his feet.

Suddenly, four more cars showed up. They were all cheap, old, run-down cars, but they served their purpose: to transport several people with guns. The Riddler stepped back behind his new protection. "Hold your fire, boys," he said. "I want them to solve a puzzle first."

"Why can't we just shoot them?" one of the gunmen asked. "We've got _the_ _Batman_ surrounded."

"Because then that wouldn't be any fun."

" _Hey, Batman? Are you bulletproof, or just bullet-resistant?_ "

Batman crouched, ready to make a move. "The second one."

" _Right. Whatever happens, let me take most of the bullets. I can take it._ "

"I have a better idea." He dropped a smoke grenade, grabbed Tex, and got the two of them out of there via a grappling cable. As soon as the smoke cleared and they were nowhere to be found, three police cars entered the scene, surrounding the Riddler's minions.

Batman pulled Tex up to the roof of the Engineering Building, but she pulled away from him. " _We have to go back! There are too many of them! The police need help!_ "

"SWAT's on its way. They'll be fine."

" _That's three police cars against four cars full of guns!_ " Tex raced back to the circle of cars, jumped off the roof, and landed on the first of the Riddler's men that she could reach. She grabbed his gun, crushed it in her hands, and moved on to the next man, repeating the process.

Even at Tex's rate, there was no way she could keep the police safe. Batman took three tear gas grenades off his utility belt and threw them in to the group of gunmen. Confusion ensued, giving the SWAT team time to get there. As for Tex, she was unhindered by the gas and took the opportunity to crush the rest of the guns and run away to her bike. Batman jumped off the roof and glided over to his own Batpod.

" _Next time I should just see what tricks you've got in your utility belt,_ " she said as she pulled out her motorcycle.

"I assumed your helmet could filter out the tear gas."

She shrugged. " _Pretty much._ " Tex noticed the skin on her left wrist was out of place, and she pushed it back in. " _It occurs to me that I haven't told you anything about my hands._ "

"You have been avoiding the conversation, yes."

" _I wouldn't have told Gordon anything if I didn't have to use them right then. I figure that since he knows, that I should probably explain it to you._ " A couple shots were fired in the crowd several yards behind them. _"But, under the circumstances …_ "

"Later," he agreed. The two of them went their separate ways, allowing the police to handle the Riddler. Batman was surprised that Tex was willing to open up, although he shouldn't have been. She didn't mind that he learned who she was under her helmet, and she didn't hamper his efforts to investigate her background further. Considering how open she was, what she chose to keep private would be very important to her.

Batman couldn't tell if this was a good thing or not. On the one hand, he didn't have to pry, which meant she was willing to trust him. On the other hand, she had confided in Gordon first, which meant that she didn't trust Batman as much as she said she did. But she knew about the night Harvey Dent died. She had more than enough reason to trust the Batman, and he had more than enough to be suspicious of her.


	16. Chapter Fifteen

It's very difficult to not do damage control when my idiot sister's being an idiot. If she wasn't careful, she would get us both killed, but she asked me nicely not to interfere, and so I took out my frustrations on my homework and workload. Mr. Wayne didn't have a whole lot of work for me to do on this particular day, so I was working on some intense chemistry homework at my desk.

"Excuse me Jenny. Are you busy?"

I nearly jumped out of my chair, I was taken so off guard. It was just Star dressed up for a nice, but casual lunch. "Star! No, no I'm not busy. Sorry, these formulas just absorb me."

She peeked at my computer where I was working on the chemical structure of an enzyme. "Yeah, that would confuse me too."

"How are you doing?"

She looked a little annoyed, but not at me. "I'm fine. I'm just looking for another show to audition for. There aren't a whole lot of things for me going in Gotham right now."

"That's true. Not a whole lot of support for the arts around here. I see your neck has healed nicely."

Star touched the scar automatically, and a flash of fear came to her eyes. She was still afraid to talk about that night and probably still blamed me for what happened, even if she said otherwise. "It has. Thanks."

"How can I help you?"

"I'm just waiting for Bruce. Is he …"

I quickly caught on to her apprehension. Mr. Wayne did have a tendency to forget important things, like the lunch he had planned with Star and didn't tell me about. "Let me go see if he's off his conference call just yet." I palmed some eye drops and went into Mr. Wayne's office, closing the door behind me.

True to form, Mr. Wayne was knocked out on the couch in his office. I had learned long ago that Mr. Wayne doesn't sleep in Wayne Manor. He prefers the couch or an office chair. He seems to get all his shut-eye somewhere in Wayne Enterprises. It annoys me, but I work around it. I also learned that I am not to disturb him unless it's a legitimate emergency. This qualified as an emergency, and apart from using a bullhorn, I wasn't sure how to go about this. Is he a light sleeper or a heavy one? Couldn't ask Star, so …

"Mr. Wayne?" I said in a low voice. He didn't stir. I touched his shoulder and said, "Mr. Wayne, Star's here." Still nothing. This time I shook his arm. "Mr. Wayne, wake—"

 _Pow!_ He jolted awake, and before he knew it, instinctively punched me in the face. I fell backwards, mostly out of shock, and held my face. "Oh my God, Jenny, I am so sorry!"

I shushed him. "Star's right outside waiting for you. She thinks you're on a conference call."

Mr. Wayne groaned. "Not again. Are you hurt?"

I gave him a 'duh' sort of look. "Of course I'm hurt. Remind me never to wake you up again. Do you destroy your alarm clocks too?"

"Let me see." He took my face in one hand and brushed his thumb over my left cheekbone. I winced where it was tender. "Looks like you'll need some ice."

"And a week and a half of caked-on concealer." He helped me to my feet and I handed him my eye drops. "Anti-redness drops. They'll make you look more awake."

He put the drops in his eyes while I hunted around his desk for a comb. "I'm really sorry. I have never done that before."

"I won't lie. You've got a solid right hook." I traded him the comb for the eye drops and put a few on my face to hopefully keep the swelling down while he fixed his hair.

Star knocked on the door, reminding us that we needed to hurry. "Where's the conference call from?"

"Um, Georgia?"

"The country or the state?"

"Pick one."

Mr. Wayne straightened his shirt and sat at his desk. "Thanks, Jenny. I owe you one."

"I'm not counting." He picked up the phone and struck up a fake conversation with someone from the Balkans and I opened the door. "He's just about done," I told Star. "Would you like to wait inside?"

She stepped into his office as he was finishing his phone call. At this point, I took a look at my face. Nothing visible yet, but Mr. Wayne was right. I would definitely need some ice. I would have to go to the break room to get some. A few moments later, Star and Mr. Wayne exited his office, his arm wrapped around her waist. "I'll be out for the next …" He struggled to find the right amount of time.

"I understand. Have fun, you two." I waved goodbye to them as they left. I couldn't help but notice that Star looked kind of pissed. She has never come to the office to pick him up before, and I don't think she was mad about that exactly. It was 12:30, so maybe he was late. Ah. He's been missing dates and Star's getting fed up with being stood up. That would explain the 'Not again,' comment from Mr. Wayne.

Mr. Wayne has never had a good track record with women. Sure, he's a bit of a playboy, but Star is the first woman he's actually held on to for a reasonable amount of time, according to the tabloids. It would be a shame if this relationship were to crash and burn.

* * *

I left work early and skipped class because I was summoned to court. I was needed to testify against Oswald Cobblepot. With any luck, I could get this thing over with today, but there was only one problem. I was kind of the key witness. No one had said that, but I was there when he was arrested, he had tried to kill me, he had tried to hire me, and I was the one who caught his bomb. Admittedly, what I did with the bomb should have killed more people than it did, and it was more dangerous to take it downstairs. The defense would probably catch on to that and would give me a hard time for that.

The trial had already been going on for three days as the police presented their evidence and their side of the story. Now it was time for other witnesses. The first thing I had to do was talk to the District Attorney so he could go over good testimony techniques. Fortunately, having grown up with my Dad and his job, I didn't really need any pointers. What was interesting, though, was one of the other witnesses. The DA had just finished talking to Star Christiansen and was about to get to me.

"Star?" I said. "What are you doing here?"

"Oh, hi Jenny. They just need to know what I was doing at the club." She was speaking a lot softer than normal.

"Probably just to corroborate my story. I hope you go first."

"Why is that?"

"Because I'm not getting out of that witness chair until I see that the jury believes me and is going to convict that lying scumbag of a monster."

"Ms. Harkness," said the DA. "Can I see you for a moment?"

"I'll see you in a bit," I told Star, giving her a reassuring squeeze of her hand. Then I followed the DA.

District Attorney Arnold Bartholomew is a tall, imposing man with dark hair, brown eyes, olive skin, and something like a military haircut. He's a charming, schmoosing, people's man, but not in any way corrupt. The least corrupt out of any of the candidates at the time, actually, probably because he was the least experienced. Either way, he got my vote.

Bartholomew took me to a quiet wing of the courthouse and sat on one of the benches without inviting me to take a seat. "You're a lot bigger than I remember."

"Pardon me?"

"Your dad and I used to work in the same office in New York."

"Oh. I didn't know that." I didn't bother to hide my disinterest.

"How is Jacob doing? Is he still doing homicide?"

"Missing Persons, actually. I think he's a Special Agent now."

"Not surprising after what happened to your sister. How's Jackie?"

"She's fine and living with me. Dad was in Missing Persons for at least ten years, long before she went missing. He actually heads his own team."

"Good, good. Your dad used to show us pictures of you all the time. He wouldn't stop talking about how you solved the Mirkwood case. What were you, five?"

"Four and a half. And he read me the FBI's Most Wanted list as a bedtime story every night until I was eight."

He chuckled. "No wonder you got yourself involved with The Penguin."

"That was an accident. He came to me."

"I'll hear it in court. I've done some research on you and your tactics in court. I hear you have a tendency to lead questioning the way you want it to go."

"And in all _two_ cases that happened, the prosecution wasn't asking the right questions. If I hadn't stepped in and led them in the direction that I did, those criminals wouldn't have been convicted. They had the evidence, but they weren't reaching the conclusions that they should have."

"Well we have the right evidence, and enough to keep him in jail for at least 40 years without your help. It sure helps that he threatened over fifty policemen with a bomb. Nobody threatens to kill cops in this town unless they want to be put away for life, not after the Joker attacks."

"But I'm the one that actually put the explosives in a place where they could hurt the police."

"Well don't tell them that." I had to nod in agreement. He had a point. "Did Star know?"

"I didn't tell her. I don't know why she helped me. It was dangerous and stupid to redecorate the place at the time."

"I agree. I won't get into it, but you can bet the prosecution will call her on it."

"You're the one who wanted to use her as a witness. I wouldn't have."

"Are you a law student?" I bit my tongue. It was clear that despite the glowing reviews Dad gave of me, Bartholomew still thought I was nothing more than a gifted kid who was a little bit arrogant at times, and I was getting on his nerves. "Apart from Batman and Tex, you two are the best civilian witnesses I have."

"Cobblepot is a blackmailer who has ruined plenty of other people's lives and their businesses. I can help you find one of them and they can testify against him. You could get him for fraud, extortion, and probably murder – something more than a paltry white collar crime."

"The police already have enough to charge him with murder. The Mayor wants him put away fast, and we've got enough to put him away for a long time. We don't actually need you."

My jaw clenched, but I said nothing. I should be happy that he was being put away, but I couldn't help but feel that my pride was being punched in the gut. If I'm not the key witness, then what the heck am I doing here? I turned and left him without trying to see what he originally wanted and found Star. "Let's go," I said grumpily.

"What was all that about?" she asked.

"The DA and I don't exactly see eye-to-eye. How was lunch?" Time to pry into her life.

She barely revealed any of her annoyance; she was an actress for a reason. "It was fine."

"You're mad at him." Star has been brewing for a few weeks, and what happened at the Iceberg Lounge was only the beginning. I'm not sure that she's recovered from that trauma.

"A little bit, yeah," she replied testily, "and I don't need you prying into my life!" I waited a few moments. The thing about boiling pots is that you don't need to look to know that they're ready. Sometimes, they just start whistling. "It's just that I feel like an afterthought to him. Like, 'Oh, yeah, I've got a girlfriend. Guess I should call her or something.' Everything's clockwork. Wednesdays are for roses, Fridays are for dinner, Sundays are for chocolate. None of it's from him because he's got someone else to do the work for him. I just want to see Bruce. Not his gifts, just him. I want to be late to work in the morning because I was up talking to him. I'd like a note to hide in my purse. I'd like to take _him_ someplace, but he's too busy for whatever I have planned. Got plenty of time for whatever he's planned, though!"

"Do you want me to kidnap him for you?"

"A little bit, yes." We reached the courtroom.

Star and I sat in the audience behind the prosecution's table. When we came into the room, Cobblepot turned around and stared at us with a smirk across his face. He had on a black business suit rather than his Victorian one – the old one was probably in evidence storage. His lawyer looked as slimy as anyone hired by the Penguin would be. Brown hair slicked back, pencil mustache, fingerprints on his glasses … I could almost smell him. Her was preparing an argument and was ignoring us. I waved back to the Penguin with a smirk of my own. My goal today was not to match wits with him, but to convince the jury that I was on their side.

"I hope this doesn't take long," said Star.

* * *

Star's testimony took around fifteen minutes, and it was mostly just confirming specific details. They didn't spend a whole lot of time on the Poodle Lady's attack. They wanted to know why she helped set the bombs, and her entire reason was that I asked her to. The Defense team probably realized she wasn't a threat. She was only a bystander, after all, and I think Cobblepot told his lawyer to focus on me. I shouldn't feel so special. I was the one that would take the rest of the day.

"I would like to call my next witness, Jenny Harkness, to the stand."

I took my seat facing the rest of the court, swore to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and smiled at the jury.

"Jenny Harkness, is that your full name?" the D.A. clarified.

"yes. My mother thought giving me a nickname for a given name was a good idea. She fixed that with my sister, who actually goes by her nickname."

"How did you meet the defendant?"

Over the next few minutes, I went over the details of how Mr. Cobblepot came into my life. Most of it was boring and I've already covered that, so I'll just skip that. The DA gave me the easy questions, apart from the fact that I had absolutely no way to prove that he had sent the bomb or was targeting me. In either case, the most physical harm I suffered due to this man was a few cuts and bruises, and my hearing nearly taken away from me. I didn't understand this until later, but my doctors thought that I wouldn't get my hearing back because I have some family history of hearing loss.

No, the difficult part came when Mr. Cobblepot's lawyer took over questioning me. "Ms. Harkness," he began, "did you know who 'the Penguin' was before you met the defendant?"

"I'd heard the name tossed around in the news from time to time, but I didn't connect the two until Tex said she was going to go get the Penguin."

"Ms. Harkness, who do you believe sent the bomb to your office?" he asked me.

I sighed because I couldn't lie about this. "I can tell you who sent the penguin and whose address was on the box and who wrote the note inside, and that is the defendant. I cannot tell you where the bomb came from because I do not have the expertise to conclusively say the bomb and the crystal penguin were one and the same. However, due to the tone of the note and the underlying threat attached, I would say that it was Mr. Cobblepot that sent the bomb. The fact that it only went off when I brought the statue downstairs tells me that the bomb and the crystal penguin are related."

"You said the note had an underlying threat. What do you mean by that?"

"It sounded fake to begin with. The note said that Mr. Cobblepot had given up, which is out of character for him. He doesn't let go of anything except on his terms. Plus it implied that Mr. Cobblepot had forgiven Mr. Wayne for some grievance against him, which was the wrong way around. On top of that, it was an odd gift to give. A pen, a stationary set, a mug would have been fine, but a crystal penguin? That was just so out of the blue that I immediately took it to security because I didn't trust it. I didn't expect it to blow up, but it just could not stay in the office."

"In other words, there was no direct threat to you or Mr. Wayne."

"No."

"Ms. Harkness, this is something that has confused the police. If you suspected the crystal penguins were bombs, why did you go out of your way to collect them?"

"Well, I was suspicious of them. I didn't know exactly what was up, but there was something wrong. It really started when a neighboring company e-mailed me their sympathies and mentioned in passing that they had been given a hideous crystal penguin. I realized that we weren't the only ones to get one of them, nor were we the first to be visited by Mr. Cobblepot. So I started e-mailing other companies around town to see who had been given crystal penguins,and I offered to take them off their hands so I could study them. I ended up collecting 24 penguins."

"Where did you keep them?"

"In an empty field a little outside of town, sort of towards the airport. On the off chance that they were actually bombs, I didn't feel like killing the rest of my neighbors. Mr. Wayne did mention to me later that Wayne Enterprises had experimented with a clear, solid explosive, but never did come up with anything conclusive. They shut down the project after someone stole a prototype, and they realized it was too volatile."

"Why did you put them back in the Iceberg Lounge?"

"I didn't want them anymore. Besides, they fit with the Iceberg Lounge's décor."

"So did you determine that they weren't dangerous?"

"I didn't have the resources to rule either possibility out, but since they were Mr. Cobblepot's, I figured he would know."

"Why not mail them to him? Why did you deliver them personally?"

"Mr. Cobblepot invited me to the Arctic Circle in the Iceberg Lounge. I thought I would kill two birds with one stone."

"Could you tell the jury why you planted _explosives_ in the building, close enough to hurt the police?"

"I didn't expect the police to be there, the building was empty, and I wasn't even sure that they were bombs yet. Furthermore, I let Mr. Cobblepot know that all of the penguins were in the building so he could act accordingly."

"Why did Mr. Cobblepot invite you to the Iceberg Lounge in the first place?"

"First to offer me a job again. Then so he could have me killed."

"Back up."

"Right. Mr. Cobblepot invited me to the VIP room in the Iceberg Lounge. The invitation is in evidence. I found it in my mailbox, but without a post office mark. I went there after telling several people where I would be. He again offered me a job to collect blackmail, but not just on Mr. Wayne. On anyone and everyone."

"Why you?"

"Because I'm smart. My father is an FBI Agent and raised me with a certain set of instincts. I notice things other people don't. For instance, I can tell you that the defendant owns at least eight different kinds of birds and was married at least 20 years ago, but was divorced only recently, maybe five years ago."

"Is this true?" His lawyer turned to his client for confirmation, and Mr. Cobblepot only nodded. The lawyer turned back to me, annoyed that his client hadn't tried to sully my credibility. "I see. What was different about this offer as opposed to his previous one?"

"He was prepared to pay me up front. He had a check for $500,000 ready for me. He was also offering me a job with the opportunity to use my brain even more than I do at Wayne Enterprises."

"Why did you turn him down?"

"I thought of my sister and how she thinks I'm Sherlock Holmes' great-granddaughter or something. Which reminded me of the Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton. In this case, I was Holmes and he was Milverton, except I didn't break into his house, crack his safe, and burn the contents. However, as soon as I told him the story, he had his friends take me into the back to kill me because he thought it was me."

"What exactly did he say?"

"He told his people to take care of me and leave my body in the river."

"Ms. Harkness, could you be so kind as to tell the court where you were when my client's home was broken in to?"

"Of course. I was with my friend Imogen Watson telling her all about the Wayne Party I had just left."

"So you didn't break into his home?"

"No. I believe Bane testified and said it was Batman and Tex."

"So you're not –"

"I'm not Tex."

"But you don't find it odd that you mentioned the story of Charles Augustus Milverton after everything in his safe was burned, just like in the story? Coincidence?"

"Yes. If I was following the story, I would have shot him already. Plus, the police saw Tex and I – two separate people – on the roof of the Iceberg Lounge. Furthermore, she is the one who saved me from the defendant."

"Did you know someone had broken into his house?"

"No. That was the first I had heard of it. If it was me, I wouldn't have burnt anything. I would have just taken the evidence. My guess, though, is that it was Tex because she's the one who came to save me."

"Tex saved you?"

I nodded. "She beat up the hit-men, and woman, and told me to get in my car and leave. Then she left to go do something in the Iceberg Lounge."

"Then what did you do?"

"When the fire alarm went off, I took the 24 crystal penguins out of my car and had my friend Star help me place them around the building. It was deserted as far as I knew. When I was done, I told Star to leave and went upstairs to the roof."

"Why?"

"Because I could hear a helicopter and I knew that's the way Mr. Cobblepot had gone. I thought I would give at least one back to him personally. Judging by his reaction, I would say that he was not at all pleased that I had brought the penguin back to him."

"Was the vigilante known as The Batman there?"

"Yes. He was holding back because the defendant was threatening to detonate the bombs. He stepped in to disable him while he was distracted. Plus when I told Batman that he had tried to kill me, he hit him a couple of times out of some misplaced sense of chivalry. I don't know."

That elicited a couple chuckles out of the audience and jury, most of all from a woman in her fifties with short, strawberry blonde hair and a botox smooth face. I was surprised I hadn't noticed her before because she just didn't belong. She wasn't a journalist or simply a curious onlooker. Somehow she was personally involved, and yet not a witness to any of the crimes the Penguin was being charged with today.

"Are you a so-called 'Batman Supporter'?" Mr. Cobblepot's lawyer continued.

"No. He was nothing but kind to me, but I do not believe in his vigilantism."

"Did you ask The Batman, to assault my client?"

"I did not. I only told him the truth. I have no control over The Batman. No one does."

"What did you say, exactly."

"I said, 'Tried to kill me. Twice.' The first time was with a bomb, the second time was when his goons punched me in the throat and dragged me into the back alley to shoot me and drop me in the river. Batman reacted accordingly by punching the defendant twice."

"You provoked the Batman into attacking my client?"

"I did nothing. Your client did all the work himself. I trusted that Batman would take the necessary precautions to keep me safe. Part of that was knowing _why_ that man was a danger to me."

He was having an effect on the jury. They were eying me with a bit more suspicion now, and seeming to favor him. The Penguin's lawyer was only beginning to paint him as a poor man targeted by the police and society. "One last question, Ms. Harkness. You had your suspicions that the crystal penguins were bombs before you placed them in the club. Were you trying to kill my client?"

A little, yes, but he didn't need to know that. "He was the one with the detonator. As soon as I dropped off all the penguins, I made it very clear to Mr. Cobblepot that if he pushed the button, he would be killing himself."

"I'll take that as a yes. No further questions, your honor." He returned to his table looking quite smug. Not exactly what I wanted, and by the looks of some of the people in the audience, it's not what they had in mind either.

Court was let out soon after that to be resumed the next day. I wasn't needed anymore. Star tried to catch me on my way out, but I ran past her. "Jenny!" she started.

"Sorry, later!" And I ran out of the room after someone specific.

I caught up with the strawberry-blonde woman down an empty hall of the courthouse away from the press and the crowd. She faced away from me and was working on something in her hands. It sounded metallic, and I could hear her crying as well. I cleared my throat noisily, and she spun around, quickly hiding her little project in her pocket. I made a point not to call her out on it.

"It's amazing how much damage one little indiscretion can do," I said gently.

"What would you know?"

"I know that The Penguin hurt you. Bled you dry, squeezed even more out, and then exposed you anyway."

It was an obvious shot in the dark, but it worked anyway. Instead of wondering how I knew, she started spilling. "It was one time! My husband and I were having trouble, and I just wanted to clear my head. I met a guy at a bar, we bonded, one thing led to another ..."

"Cobblepot found out."

"I don't even know how. It was years ago, but somehow he had pictures and evidence. He said that if I didn't pay him $50,000, he would tell my husband. I forked over the money, hoping that was the end of it. Then he just kept coming back for more. I was borrowing from friends, stealing from my husband, embezzling in his company, but when there was no more money ..." She struggled to regain her composure as the memory brought back tears. "There was no reason for what he did! Frank and I were poorer than we had ever been, but we were happier too. It was the strangest thing. Somehow, all this trouble was bringing us closer together. But Cobblepot just ruined everything for no other reason than he liked to see me in pain." This woman full-on started sobbing, unable to stop the emotion.

"Did you press charges?"

She nodded. "But that lawyer of his … he's such a slime. He made it look like the entire thing was all my fault. He got off scott-free. The Penguin has been in court more times than I can count, and he gets away every single time."

"You were the first to press charges."

"Yes. And I've been to every court proceeding he's at, hoping someone will finally put an end to his torture. I thought that this time, we would finally get him. After today … it's just like all the others. He's going to get away and everyone's going to bend over backwards to beg for his forgiveness."

"This time he went too far. The jury's going to find him guilty. They have to."

"Not after his lawyer got through with you. Tomorrow, he's going to say you planted the bombs and then you'll be charged with attempting to kill the police or something."

"Come on, I wasn't that bad."

"There's only one way to make sure he never hurts anyone ever again."

"Please don't mean what I think you mean," I mumbled.

She took the thing she was working on earlier out of her pocket. It was a nearly completed ceramic handgun. "I read The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton a long time ago. I thought it was oddly fitting for me. Even more so now. Right at the end, a ruined woman comes to his house in the middle of the night."

"I've read it. I know. Sherlock Holmes is not real. You do not need to follow this story to the letter because that jury is full of good, ethical people. They are going to find him guilty of everything."

"Even the author knew that this type of man cannot be brought to justice by the law. The only justice that's left is revenge."

"Vengeance is not justice. Even if you manage to kill him, you will be caught or killed. There's no reason for you to suffer even more."

"There's no reason for any of this! There's no reason for either of us to live. You know he deserves this, Harkness. Jail is not enough for him."

"I know this is hard, but we have to trust the legal system to do its job. We have to let an unbiased party be the one that hands out justice."

"Justice? You have too much faith in Gotham. This city and its laws are so corrupt that it lets men like Oswald Cobblepot go free for the worst crimes on minor 'technicalities.'"

"It's supposed to be hard to convict people in this system so we don't send the wrong people to jail. It's a flawed system at times, but it works. We have to put our faith in the prosecution and the defense or else the system doesn't work. If you shoot the Penguin , you'll be breaking that faith and trust and enable more criminals to escape justice. Can you just trust the law a little longer?"

"I'm sorry, but I've waited long enough. Too long for anything resembling justice for me or this man. Just let me do this!"

"No. I can't. I'm not going to let you ruin your life like this."

"How can my life possibly get worse?"

"You may think you've got nothing to lose, but you'd be surprised at how much you've got. Your husband could want you back, but if you kill Cobblepot, you'll be in jail and you'll never see him again, not even in passing. Right now, you see nothing, but from where I stand, you've still got something. That's why I'm not going to let you kill him. You don't deserve to do this to yourself. Give me the gun." I held out my hand, but she only pointed it at me. "I know you don't want to kill me. Just give it to me."

"I will if I can kill the Penguin. You're all that stands in my way." As brave as her words were, the gun was shaking uncontrollably in her hand.

"You'll never make it. There are cameras everywhere. All you will have done is murder me, and he will get away for sure. Give me the gun."

"Please. I need this. I need closure."

"So do I. And for me, that means seeing him rot in a jail cell. Give. Me. The. Gun."

She struggled with it for a few more seconds while I waited patiently with my hand outstretched. Then, slowly, she pushed the gun into my hand. As soon as it left her grasp, she wrapped her arms around herself and fell to the ground, wracked with sobs.

As much as I felt I should stay and comfort her, I needed to get the gun well away from her. I walked down a couple halls, around a corner, set it down in a trash can, and left to go find Star.

"Where did you go?" Star asked me when I finally found her.

"Had to go talk to someone to prevent a tragedy. How are you holding up?"

She shrugged. "Just tired. That was really boring."

"It could be worse." Memories of my previous visits to court made an unwelcome comeback, and I pushed them away before I could reflect on how long and drawn out they were. "Do you have a ride home?"

"Yeah. Bruce is coming to pick me up in a few minutes. I'm sure we'll have room in the car if you need a ride."

"No, it's alright. Thank you, though. I was just going to take the bus."

"Are you sure?"

I was about to tell her that taking the bus home wouldn't kill me when my phone rang. I recognized the number as James Carroll's. "Actually, I think I may have just found my ride home. Excuse me." I stepped away and went outside to answer it. "Hello, James."

"Jenny, hi! I just heard you were testifying against the Penguin today!"

I raised an eyebrow. "How?"

"Well, I didn't really hear about it. I just saw that he was being tried today, and I knew you would be testifying one of these days."

"Then how did you know I was here?" I didn't think they listed who would be testifying in the newspaper, no matter how unscrupulous Gotham Chronicle journalists were.

"I tried calling you at work, and they told me you were at court."

"Oh. Well, I just got done with court and I'm on my way home."

"On the bus? Let me give you a ride home."

"I don't know. I think it would just be faster –"

"And we could go get dinner, too. Something low-key, like Chicken Express."

I sighed as my stomach growled. I had been getting used to Jackie making my lunch, despite my objections to the practice. She was up late last night taking care of the Riddler, and didn't have a chance to make lunch for either of us. "I could go for that. Besides, it seems you know a lot more about me than I know about you, and I want to fix that."

"Great! I'll be right there!"


	17. Chapter Sixteen

" _You let him go?_ " Tex shrieked.

"There was no evidence of a crime he committed. We didn't even have a crime to charge him with, so after 48 hours, we had to release him." Commissioner Gordon sounded a little peeved, but this was somewhat routine. "We just need to collect some actual evidence."

" _What about the fact that he had people with guns? What about breaking into secure government computers?_ "

"The gunmen said they had no idea who he was and that they weren't working for him. And we had no way to prove he wasn't just an innocent bystander in all this."

" _This is just unfair._ "

Gordon sighed. "That's the law for you. If the Riddler's smart, he'll stay out of trouble and leave us alone. If not, we'll catch him and keep him. Either way, he shouldn't be any more trouble for us personally. I can't say the same for anyone else."

" _But … Now he's just gloating._ " She gestured to the man in a green suit and bowler hat as he walked away from the police station. He stopped, turned around, looked up to the roof, and bowed with overstated grandeur to Tex and the Commissioner. " _Jerk._ "

"He's up to something. He let himself get caught."

" _Batman thought the same thing._ "

"Is he following the Riddler?"

" _Nope._ " She hopped onto the ledge. " _He says that it's my case, so I get to track him._ "

"Sounds like he's got you doing his busywork."

Tex shrugged. " _It's busywork for the Batman. I couldn't be any luckier. Did you get any other information on the Riddler?_ "

"He said his name was Edward Nygma. It checked out with driver's license database, but considering his skill with a keyboard, it could have just as easily been faked."

" _I'll let him know. Thanks._ " Tex stepped back and fell off the building, presumably figuring out how not to die on the way down. Gordon looked down to the street, but Tex had vanished.

* * *

For his part, Batman was not being lazy. He was holed up in the Batcave with a mug of coffee in one hand and a computer mouse in the other. Out of costume, Bruce Wayne scoured the data the police had collected from the cyber attack. So far, he hadn't been able to find anything useful that the police hadn't found already, and none of it connected to the Riddler. Whatever program Tex had used to stop the attack had erased itself completely and left behind a firewall about as strong as the Pentagon's.

"Computer code," Alfred commented as he arrived with dinner on a tray. "I didn't think this was your area of expertise." He let a stray eye wander over a stack of programming reference books.

"It's not. It's Tex's, apparently."

"Is she working on this too?"

"No, I'm having her track the Riddler."

"Isn't that your area of expertise? You two seem to be working at cross purposes."

"She needs the practice, and so do I. The Riddler himself can't do much damage without his friends, so it should be safe." His phone rang in his pocket. He let it ring a few more times and go to voicemail before he pulled it out, checked the caller ID, and set it down on the table.

"Star again?"

"I'm kind of busy right now. I already told her I have an emergency at work."

"With all due respect, you can't just keep putting Star off. She's not going to wait forever."

"I'll get to her when I'm done with Tex." He took his other, untraceable phone and dialed Tex, whose number he had stolen from his secretary's cell. "Where are you at?" he asked in his disguised voice.

"At a power plant just outside of town," Jackie whispered. "The Riddler's meeting with a whole bunch of guys, and they're all in SUVs and pickups."

"What's he saying?"

"Nothing. He's handing out maps and papers. I can't get close enough to read them."

"Do you have plate numbers?" Bruce pulled up a program to find out who owned the vehicles.

"Yeah. MM0 137. Z24 – oh shoot!" Bruce heard boots tearing through a dry, grassy field. Tex was running after something. The sound of a car running got closer, then something like a chain-link fence being driven through. A few moments later, there was a crash of metal against metal and glass, but the engine was still running and getting even louder.

"Tex, what's going on?" he shouted, but he could probably guess when the lights suddenly shut off in the Batcave and his computers let him know that they were running off separate power supplies.

Gravel crunched under Tex's boots and she opened a car door. " _Are you conscious?_ " she asked someone. " _Are you breathing?_ " That someone grunted a reply, and then something large and soft like a body hit the gravel. Tex dragged it over the gravel a ways before a _whoosh_ of flames crackled in the phone's receiver.

She was on the line again. " _Batman, I really need your help._ "

"I'm on my way. What's your location?" He was already getting his armor on.

" _Just go to a power station. All the other cars are gone. I think they split up to attack the other plants. I just don't get why._ "

"To cause a blackout. Where's the Riddler?"

Tex looked around and let out a scream of frustration away from the receiver. " _Gone!_ "

Batman felt her disappointment, but knew he would have rescued the driver too. "I'll find him. Find out why the driver agreed to attack the power station."

" _Problem with that. The place is crawling with people now._ "

"Then you'd better hurry."

Tex hung up with a huff. He didn't have much time to get out and stop at least one of the drivers. He finished gearing up and shut off the computers to save power. Then he got inside the Tumbler II, revved up the engine, and roared out of the cave.

The closest power station was most likely the one Tex was already at, so he raced to the next one in an attempt to head off the Riddler's men. His headlights were the only light on the road for a while until he reached the next section of the city supplied by a different plant. Only a minute away from the power station, the electricity died in that section as well.

Gotham had three major power stations, and two were already down. Batman powered on the thrusters and hurtled through the outskirts of town. There were only a few drivers on the road. Luckily for him, the drivers of Gotham had long ago learned what the Tumbler II sounded like, especially if it was in a hurry, and out of habit, pulled over to let him pass like he was in an emergency vehicle or something with a siren blaring.

The Tumbler II went flying over a hill and landed by the entrance of the third power plant. The chain-link fence topped with a healthy dose of barbed wire was still intact. The Riddler's men hadn't made it yet. Batman opened up the hatch and scanned the nearby surroundings with a pair of binoculars.

His haste had paid off. Twenty seconds behind him was a dark green SUV racing straight for the gates. He got back inside the Tumbler II and revved the engine menacingly. The SUV wavered slightly, signaling that the driver had heard and/or seen the obstacle and decided to keep driving.

If the man wanted to play chicken, so be it. Batman held his ground, knowing he would barely feel the impact.

What he did not calculate on, however, was the two other vehicles, another SUV and a pickup truck, that came behind the first one. The SUV hit the back bumper of the leader, sending him careening off the dirt road. The other two overtook him in a desperate race for the gate. Batman started off towards the oncoming vehicles, aiming for a point in between the two.

Batman flipped a few switches, spun the Tumbler II around, and dropped several spiked balls in the road. The SUV's tires burst on the spikes and the driver lost control, having no choice but to stop. The pickup, however, managed to miss the spikes entirely and drive alongside the Tumbler II in Batman's blind spot. But the time he noticed that there were only two disabled cars instead of three, the pickup had overtaken him and burst through the gate. The Tumbler II had no difficulty building back its speed, but the damage was done. The pickup rammed into a significant part of the power station with a brilliant display of sparks and minor explosions. The plant suddenly died like it had been stabbed in the heart, and Batman could almost hear the electricity fizzing out of the wires.

The driver climbed out of the truck, wobbled for a second, and then ran away with a limp. Batman decided he wasn't worth tracking down, and drove back to the disabled SUVs. The first one managed to get itself back on its feet and drove away as soon as it could. The other one, on the other hand, had no tires. Batman leaped out of the Tumbler II, opened the driver's side door, and pulled out the hapless man. "What was all that about?" he snarled.

The man was in his 20's, frail, and bald. There were holes in his arm and raised veins where IVs would have been inserted. "The Riddler promised a million dollars to our families if we crashed into a power plant or cell phone tower, but only the first person to each site gets the money."

"It was a race? How many are left?"

"I don't know. He just gave us a map with places marked where we should go." Batman found the map on the passenger seat, grabbed it, and started for the Tumbler II. This made the man panic. "Wait! Aren't you going to kill me?"

The Batman turned back, surprised. " _No_. Why would I do that?"

"I just thought –"

"You were wrong!" He jumped back into his tank and sped off, leaving the man dying of cancer behind. On his way back to town, he called Tex back to check in.

" _What is it?_ " Tex shouted over some background noise, most likely a motorcycle engine.

"The Riddler's making this a game –"

" _Yeah, I know._ " The call was abruptly cut off. However, she left her cell phone on so she could be tracked. Batman pulled up her coordinates and set his course for her.

Tex was traveling at about 45 miles an hour towards downtown Gotham with no sign of slowing down. It took Batman nearly fifteen minutes to somewhat catch up with her and plot an intercept course. He was nearly at an intersection when he saw a red streak zoom down the street perpendicular to his. Tex was racing away on her bike followed by three diesel powered trucks that basically plowed through traffic.

He backed the Tumbler II up, turned around, and went down a parallel street to head her off. When his tracking system said he was far enough ahead, he turned right down the next street, and right again onto Tex's street. A second later, he saw her dart around a car, looking over her shoulder quickly to see how far ahead she was. Tex was losing ground and one of the trucks attempted to hit her, but she sped up and dodged him.

Batman switched to weapons mode and aimed for the trucks' tires. Tex sped up even more and took advantage of the Tumbler II's design by driving straight over top of it, stopping at the back end, and laying her bike down. The trucks chasing her suddenly had reservations about challenging the Batman, but still didn't stop or back off. With Tex out of the way, Batman had a clear line of sight and shot out the tires with some machine-gun fire. The trucks swerved to avoid it, and crashed into the parked cars on either side of the road.

"Are you alright?" Batman asked as he climbed out of the Tumbler II.

" _Yep. Super,_ " she growled, inspecting her bike. " _Thanks for the rescue._ "

"The Riddler's having his men play against each other for money."

" _Yeah, I noticed. He offered $1 million to whoever runs me over first._ " Tex started to walk her bike off the Tumbler II, but Batman just took it and set it down on the street. " _Thanks. Want to know how much they can win to kill you?_ "

"How much?"

" _Nothing. No one's stupid enough to try to kill you, and Riddler's smart enough not to ask._ " The two of them jumped off of the Tumbler II. " _What makes people nearly kill themselves or others for money?_ "

"They're desperate and trying to provide for their families."

" _How do you know they have families?_ "

"Because they're dying. The man I talked to had cancer. These men probably have the same. The Riddler wasn't just taking out Gotham's power. He's taking out the cell towers too."

" _He's cutting off the city. Do you think he'll go after the phone lines next?_ "

He shook his head. "Landline phones need electricity. Plus, he'll need some sort of network in place to commit his style of crimes."

" _Okay. So what's he going to hit next? Apart from, you know,_ " she gestured to the dark buildings around them, " _everywhere._ "

Batman thought for a moment. "He plays by a certain set of rules. I wonder ..." He trailed off as he found the map with the marked locations. On the bottom of the page was a series of numbers and letters. "How good are you with codes?"

Tex took the paper and gave it a glance. " _Not very. There's a watermark in the paper. Right here, it says 'We.'_ " She pointed out a spot just to the right of the center.

He held it up to the light. "W. E. It's the Wayne Enterprises logo. He got the paper from Wayne Tower." He jumped into the Tumbler and started the engine back up.

" _What does the code say?_ "

"I'll figure it out and let you know. Meet up at Wayne Tower."

" _How will you get in touch if the cell towers are out?_ "

"I'll bring something. Go!" He closed the hatch and sped away with Tex only a few feet behind him.

* * *

After getting some gas and checking her tires, Tex finally made it to Wayne Enterprises. Batman had only gotten there minutes before, but the way he stood in the back parking lot with his arms crossed made it seem like he had been waiting for ages for her to show up.

Tex parked behind a dumpster and approached him. " _So, do we just wait out here for the Riddler to show up?_ "

"Not exactly." He went to the back door usually used for shipments, and 'cracked' the code to get in. "We'll wait in here."

Tex peeked inside, but was hesitant to go in. " _Are you sure Mr. Wayne won't mind us breaking and entering?_ "

"As long as we don't touch anything, I'm sure we'll be fine."

" _Shouldn't we wait out here for the Riddler? It seems like it would be much easier._ "

"They're not criminals until they break in. Until then, they're just loiterers. Besides, we have the advantage inside."

Like a gentleman, Batman let Tex go in ahead of him before he shut and locked the door behind him. There were no lights in the hallway, not even the emergency power was running. The only light came from Tex's red eyes. Batman held her shoulders and steered her down a specific hallway. " _Do you know where we're going?_ "

"Research and Development. It's the only place that has the equipment or materials the Riddler wants. It's also the most heavily protected."

" _Which is why we got in here just fine._ "

"The power failure has neutralized several of the security features. Not this one, though. Duck." He had her limbo under a laser trip wire and ducked under it in turn. Batman had to be careful not to let on that he didn't know about all these security measures just because he was Batman. Tex didn't let on if she suspected anything.

They came to a large, warehouse like room with rows upon rows of large containers with the drawers of prototypes. Tex walked up to one of the drawers to see if there were any labels. " _I wonder ..._ "

"Don't touch," he warned again. She reluctantly followed his advice. "We'll wait for the Riddler and his men here. We should have a few minutes until he gets here. In the meantime..." He opened up one of the pouches on his belt and pulled out a small radio receiver that fit in the palm of his hand. "It's tuned only to my earpiece. I can call you, you can call me."

Tex touched the spot on her neck with the button and her helmet retracted before she took the radio. Her red hair fell out of her collar. "Thank you. Does this mean we're going steady?" She noticed the odd look he was giving her for taking off her helmet. "None of the security cameras are working," she explained.

This did not ease his fears, but he let it go. "It means that there's going to be a lot more trouble and I want you ready at a moment's notice. Got it?" He started hunting through the prototypes for something he knew had attracted the Riddler's attention: an experimental EMP cannon that had a nasty habit of shutting itself off every time it fires. He had no doubt that the Riddler would want to use it to keep the city from getting back off the ground.

"Got it." She started fiddling with something inside her collar. "I think I can hook this up to my helmet so you won't have to hear my cancer voice all the time." She pushed aside from hair from her left side, revealing to Batman a scar and barely a flap of skin where there should have been an ear. Faded scars from burns stretched from the edge of her cheekbone into where her hairline should have been. Her hair started a couple centimeters higher than normal.

He noticed it immediately. "What happened to your ear?"

Suddenly, she was done fiddling with the radio and she pulled her hair over her scars. "Nothing," she blatantly lied as she wove a loose braid to hide it.

This piqued his curiosity as Jackie didn't normally lie. Evade questions, yes, but never by lying. "When did that nothing happen?"

She shrugged. "A while ago. It doesn't matter."

"Three years ago, perhaps?" He approached her carefully.

The closing distance and the pointed questions made her avert her eyes uneasily. "Perhaps."

"That's why you're deaf on your left side."

"You know what I haven't explained yet?" she burst out with some orchestrated cheer. "My hands! Might as well tell you about them now while we've got a quiet moment."

This was a strange topic to bring up, but it was clear she would rather talk about her mechanical hands than the lack of an ear. "Make it quick," he growled in true Batman fashion.

"Can I borrow a Batarang?" He pulled one from out of nowhere and threw it at her. She flinched, but her right hand caught it expertly. "Thanks. You have to promise not to puke." He gave her a steely glare. He does not puke. "Okay, but this throws some people off," she warned him before getting started.

He stepped closer to watch her as she carefully separated the two sections of skin on her wrist. This time, she went all the way around her wrist and gently pulled off the skin from her hand like a glove. The skin stretched over her bones, slowly revealing the metal skeletal structure beneath. It was incredibly detailed and sophisticated for a prosthetic limb. Actually, it was complex for any piece of high-tech robotics. Jackie curled each of her fingers and bent her wrist so he could get an idea of how her hand worked. "Both hands?" he said incredulously. "Do you mind?"

"Sure." She gave him her left hand and the skin so he could get a closer look at the mechanics involved. "Before you ask, I didn't chop my hands off for the heck of it. I got these hands because I needed them."

"What happened?"

"Some people who didn't like me shattered all the bones in my hand. By the time I got medical attention, they couldn't be saved and the doctors had to amputate them. After a few weeks, I was part of a controversial medical experiment where they implanted these guys. There are titanium rods fused to the bones in my arms so they can't just pop off, several thousand microscopic wires connected to my nerves so I can move them and feel dramatic changes in temperature, and enough of a computer to house a partial AI that helps me run my hands. It kind of predicts how I'm going to move my hands and helps me stay coordinated. As an added bonus, they know how to fight better than I do."

"This is how you were trained to fight?" he asked with a raised eyebrow of skepticism.

"I wasn't really trained at all, actually. As experimental as these guys are, they are _advanced_. They play the piano, crack safes, pick locks –"

"Trace hackers back to their location?"

"Yeah," she laughed. "My hands are smarter than me."

He didn't believe that. Her hands weren't the only part of her that fought. In his basic research of her, he learned she had been trained in dance since she was twelve, and it took talent to be as coordinated as she was.

"Oh, I wanted to show you this." The pieces of metal acting as her fingernails extended a couple centimeters, and retracted. "These are great for climbing walls."

"How much stronger are your hands than the typical human hand?"

"I don't know. I think the engineers said something like eight times stronger than normal. Or 18. I was kind of out of it at the time."

"Why hasn't anyone reported on this experiment if it was a success?"

"Well, two reasons. One, it was a private venture and incredibly top secret. And two, it wasn't exactly a success. The AIs got a little out of hand, and then I ran away. So if you see me arguing with my hands … that's normal."

"What company invented them?"

"I'm not allowed to say. I'm not even supposed to let you know that my hands aren't real. And, again, I was really out of it. I have no idea what company it was. I was recovering from a lot more than a couple amputations."

"Like what?" They both knew he was indicating the burns on the side of her head.

"Just … stuff." She abruptly took her hands back and started slipping the skin back on her hand. "Is that enough to satiate your curiosity? Or did I just make it worse?"

"It will do," he replied noncommittally.

"It will do," she repeated. "Does that mean you won't break into my home again?"

"Jackie …" This was a conversation he had been carefully trying to avoid.

"It was a breach of trust and respect! Not just to me, but to Jenny as well. I'm trying to be nice about it, but it's not working. You've never apologized for it or given me a good reason for being there. I'm assuming you had one, but I'm finding it hard to think of one or keep telling myself that."

"In our line of work there is no trust and respect. You appeared out of nowhere and kept finding me despite the fact that I don't leave a trail."

"I was helping you!" she sputtered indignantly.

"To what end?" he growled, stepping into her personal bubble and getting in her face. "I don't have fans. I don't have allies. I have copycats that cause more harm than good and I have people who want to use me for their own purposes. For all I know, you could have been trying to earn my trust so it would be easier to kill me. On top of that, I had no idea how you worked, which I still can't pin down, and I can't account for where you were those two weeks you went missing. I was able to follow most of where you went once you returned, but that told me nothing. I broke into your place to try to learn more about you. I'm sorry that I scared your sister, but I will not apologize for trying to protect myself and the people of Gotham."

To Jackie's credit, she didn't move away from the raging Dark Knight, but her face was starting to fall. "I'm not dangerous. I'm just trying to do what I can to help."

"Your hands," he held one up for emphasis, "say otherwise. You are a weapon, and you haven't accepted that yet."

She pulled back her hand. "I have never, _not once_ in my entire life, killed a person. I am in control, especially when I'm compared to you."

"Do you have something you want to bring up?"

"Not really, no. Look, I tell you what you need to know, not what you _want_ to know. Believe me, I would love to spill my guts out on everything about me, and it was not easy to keep the nature of my hands to myself. But I can't. I can't answer all of your questions, and it would be so much easier on me if you wouldn't ask them."

"You know I won't stop asking."

Jackie sighed and hit her forehead on his chest plate, leaving a Batman insignia imprinted on her skin. "I know. That was stupid to ask. I'll just zip my lips from here on out." Jackie stepped back, wrapped her braid around her neck and put her helmet back on. Her eyes seemed just a little bit duller. " _I'll keep an eye out for the Riddler._ "

Tex walked away to the hallway where they had come, sat down, and watched the door. Batman returned to busying himself with the prototypes. Some of these things were built specifically for his use only, and it wouldn't do any good for Tex or the Riddler to be finding them here. Some bat themed gauntlets, a few stray batarangs, a bat shaped phone … that one he wasn't sure why Lucius developed when he was here. Others were weapons and tools he hadn't been able to use yet and were not connected to the Batman. Those could stay put.

What he was especially worried about was a computer that had the capability of breaking any code or encryption, and some energy weapons still in development. Neither of them were up to speed or even functioning, but in the right hands, or wrong as the case may be, they could become operational. He could not let that happen. In any case, the Riddler's gang would not be getting away with any merchandise.

" _They're here,_ " Tex announced, although he hadn't heard them arrive. " _ETA one minute, four seconds._ "

"That soon? Here, take these." He threw her some explosives he hadn't used since the Joker attacks, and a couple smoke canisters. "They might be useful."

" _Batman, if we do stop them today, what's to say that they won't come back?_ "

"They're not going to come back. Not after we catch their ringleader."

There was a scratching on the metal door to the department. Tex stood just behind it, waiting. The door gave a _click_ and a squeal as it slid open slightly. Batman ducked behind one of the sets of drawers to give the thieves a false sense of security. One man in a white mask poked his head through. He looked right. He looked left. He saw Tex. He saw Tex's fist. Then he saw nothing.

Tex slammed the door shut and tried to barricade it with her body, but the mass of bodies on the other side was too much for her and they easily pushed it open. She dropped one of the smoke grenades, then fell to the ground to knock some men off their feet with a sweep of her foot. Three men tripped under her feet and came to be victim to her blows.

In the confusion of the smoke and swarming men, Batman slipped into the fray, quietly disarming the Riddler's men and knocking them out before they knew he was even there. For all they knew, Tex with her devilish eyes piercing the fog was taking everyone out. Batman knocked off one person's mask, along with a couple of teeth, stole the next man's gun, and jabbed him in the throat in just about one fluid stroke. Tex preferred dancing around the invaders and letting them run into each other.

"Do you see him?" Batman murmured in the radio.

"Oof. I don't …" Her eyes swept the room. "He's going back out the door," she replied in his ear.

"On him. Stay here!" He pushed through the mass of bodies and escaped out into the hall. The Riddler's distinctive green coat-tails disappeared around the corner and Batman sprinted after him.

Just outside the building, the Riddler jumped into a waiting white convertible that had been hastily spray-painted with green question marks. Batman quickened his pace to catch him, but the Riddler was too far ahead. He dropped a phone on the ground and sped away, burning rubber as he got away.

Batman considered grabbing the Batpod and following, but by the time he would get the engine started, the Riddler would be too far away to follow.

A midi version of the Jeopardy theme rang out from the phone. Batman picked it up and answered it. "I must congratulate you, Batman," the Riddler said with a laugh. "I didn't think you would solve my puzzle this quickly."

"What puzzle?" he growled.

His voice fell. "You mean you just guessed?"

"I never guess. I followed the evidence you left behind."

He laughed again. "I never should have underestimated you, Batman. Tell me, what gave me away?"

"Why do you want to know?"

"Never underestimate the value of constructive criticism. And your advice is among the best. Was the code too easy? Did Jenny Harkness get in touch with you? Which map did you find?"

"Turn yourself in and I might let you know."

" _Tsk tsk._ Too easy. I'll give you another riddle though. He who has it doesn't tell it. He who takes it doesn't know it. He who knows it doesn't want it. What is it?" Without giving Batman a chance to answer, he ended the call.

Tex came out of Wayne Enterprises more or less intact. " _Did you catch him? Sorry. Dumb question._ "

"How did it go?"

" _I've got twelve men in there trussed up for the police. They're in a talking mood, but I don't think they know much of anything. What's that?_ " She asked, indicating the phone.

"Our next clue." He repeated the riddle for her.

" _What does it mean?_ "

"I don't know yet. I hope you're ready for the long haul. Every criminal in Gotham is about to take advantage of the blackout. The Riddler is the least of our worries."

" _This is going to be a long night, isn't it._ "


	18. Chapter Seventeen

The blackout hadn't really bothered me. All it meant was that school was canceled, and Mr. Wayne didn't feel it was necessary for either of us to come into the office. I stayed inside my apartment, worked on homework, and lived off whatever was going to spoil first in my fridge. Jammed cell phones made me wonderfully isolated.

I couldn't say the same for Jackie. It was only day two, and she was nearly exhausted. She was running on ninety minutes of sleep a day, two rushed meals, and several pockets of granola bars. I didn't envy her a bit. She hadn't showered since the day before the Riddler got free.

The door opened and slammed shut as I was trying to open a can of tangerines. Jackie sat at the table with a spaced-out expression. Her armor looked somewhat dusty, or dustier, and she wasn't even trying to braid her hair anymore. It was just a pile of hair stacked on top of her head held down by a green bandanna. Even when she didn't care what she looked like, she still had the bandanna pulled down to cover her left ear – or what was left of it – and the scars. "Oh, good," I said. "Could you help me open this?"

She took the can wordlessly, stabbed the top of it with her finger, and cut it open all the way around with a fingernail. Then she handed it right back without taking a tangerine. She should be starving.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing," she muttered.

"Something's wrong." I took the seat next to her.

"No, really, it's nothing. I've been trying to keep people from tearing each other apart limb from limb all morning long. I even had to stop a curb stomping, which I was lucky to catch. I'm upset over nothing at all compared to that"

My thoughts immediately went to Batman. Did he die or something? "What is it?" It wasn't a request this time.

Jackie's voice was choked with tears. "Someone stole my Ducati."

"Your motorcycle?"

A fist slammed into the table. "I worked for three years for that bike! Every last penny in my life savings went into that bike! Three years just gone!" Then she put her head into her arms and let her emotions flow.

The Jackie I knew would be hunting the thief down, but this Jackie was exhausted physically and emotionally, and this was the tipping point for her. "Jackie, I'm so sorry," I said sincerely. "This is absolutely unfair to do to you." I picked her shoulders up off the table and just hugged her as tight as I could. Right here was my little sister, the one that needed me.

She sobbed into my shirt and clutched me like she was about to lose me. "I don't know what I'm going to do. I have to get around the city somehow. You don't have a car, I can't take the bus or a taxi, there's no way Batman's going to give me a ride. I could run, but I'm just so tired! I've been running and fighting all day, and I'm getting nowhere. The crime's just getting worse and worse no matter what I do and I'm so tired of it."

"Aren't the police helping?"

"A little. They can't stop everything."

"Neither can you."

"There's no reason I shouldn't try."

"Have you told Batman about your bike?"

She shook her head. "He's all wrapped up with trying to find the Riddler. Counterfeit Money, that's as far as we've gotten with that stupid riddle. If I tell him, he's just going to flip his lid and tell me to be more responsible."

 _Counterfeit money?_ I mouthed. "He's on your side," I assured her. "I'm sure he'll understand."

Jackie took in a few more shaky breaths before he sobs died down. "What am I going to do?"

"Right now, you're going to take a nap. You need to take care of yourself before you go back out to war. I'll wake you up in a couple hours."

I sent her off to her room with some dried apple pieces and gave her five minutes to fall asleep. At the rate she'd been going, I was surprised it took her even two minutes to drift off. As soon as I heard her snore, I crept back into her room. Jackie had been in touch with the Batman somehow, and it couldn't have been through her phone because there was no signal in Gotham.

She hadn't bothered to take off her jacket, which wasn't odd because she likes sleeping in it. However, this wasn't going to help me. I needed to go through her pockets. Luckily for me, she was a heavy sleeper. She was curled up on her side, so I gently lifted up one of her arms to get to her pockets. A quick inspection turned up nothing. Her jacket pockets were empty. However, her left hand had a small radio in it. I smiled at that and took it happily. Sometimes Jackie and her hands work against each other.

I took the transmitter into the living room and turned it on. "Batman? Do you copy?"

A moment later, he responded. "I copy. What happened to Tex?"

"A minor catastrophe. Her bike got stolen."

"So? I don't have time to go find it."

"Well, she's a little stranded, is the thing. You weren't using the Tumbler II, were you?"

" **No.** "

"That's perfect! I bet Jackie could figure out how to drive it."

"She is **not** driving the Tumbler. She can take the Batpod." I could hear how painful it was for him to say this, and it pleased me to no end.

"Thank you Batman."

"It's a loan. A **very** short loan."

"She understands, and appreciates it very much."

I sneaked back into Jackie's room, put the radio back into her hand, and gave it a silent thank you before leaving her. If it was up to me, I would just let her sleep until the sun came up tomorrow. She shouldn't have to be out there constantly.

What confused me, though, was how quickly the city became savage. As soon as the lights went out, the city erupted, and I don't think either Tex or Batman believe that the city itself was to blame. The chaos was almost organized. Almost. In either case, Jackie wasn't having fun.

I dove into one of my textbooks in order to pass the time, keeping a careful eye on the clock. An hour and a half into my studies, I was brought out of the book by a knock on the door. After all that had gone down in Gotham, I was a little suspicious about who would be visiting me tonight. I opened the door with the chain still attached to the frame, and gave a small sigh of relief when it was only Star.

"Hi Jenny," she said with a hint of desperation. She was wearing a brown wool coat, had her hair in a messy bun, and carried a small suitcase.

I unlocked the door and let her in quickly, replacing the chain as soon as she was inside. "What are you doing here, Star?" I said.

She dropped her bag by my kitchen table and threw her coat over one of the chairs. "I'm really sorry to come over so late, but I need your help."

"I'm pretty much out of food."

"It's not that. It's Bruce."

"What's he done this time?" I offered her a seat in the living room because I had all my homework out on the kitchen table.

"I know this is really weird, but do you know where Bruce is? I keep trying to go see him, but Alfred says he's out every time. What is he doing?"

"I don't know. I haven't seen him in a while. What's the suitcase for? Are you going somewhere?"

"Yes. No. I don't know. I just can't stay at my place anymore. I'm not even sure that I can stay in Gotham. Every time I leave my house, something happens. There's a carjacker, there's a mugger, there's a bank heist. This city is out of control!"

"At that rate, how are you still alive?" Even I don't have that back of luck, and I tend to go _looking_ for trouble. The only people that have it worse are Batman and Tex.

"It's Batman. He rescues me every time. I'd be dead if he didn't keep intervening. I trip and fall and he's right there. Last night, I swore I saw him outside my window watching me, but the next second, he was gone. What – why is he –"

"He must like you. Or he knows that you attract trouble and you're making it easier for him to fight crime. I'll ask him the next time I see him."

"You've seen him again?"

"No, of course not. I'm joking in a very mean-spirited way."

Star shook her head. "I just can't keep doing this. I think I'm cursed."

I raised an eyebrow at this, hoping she was kidding. But then I remembered she's an actress and was probably not. "When did it start?

"When Tex saved me. I don't know, but I think that woman was supposed to kill me and Gotham's trying to finish the job."

"I doubt that's it. Gotham tries to kill everybody. So what if you left? What would you do?"

"Go back to New York City, audition until I find a job, act. There just isn't anything for me to do here."

"If there aren't any jobs in Gotham, what's keeping you here?"

"Bruce. There's nothing more important to me than him. It's just that I don't think I'm that important to him. I don't think he gets how scared I am of everything in this city. Or maybe he just doesn't care."

"I doubt that. He's lived here his entire life. He saw his parents get shot right in front of him, and he still stays. I think he has an understanding of Gotham that as newcomers, neither of us can comprehend." That, or he can afford protection that the rest of us can't.

She nodded furiously. "You're right. You're absolutely right. I can't stay here at all. I never should have tried. I need to figure out what my priorities are and – "

Jackie suddenly ran out from her bedroom, managing to look even more disheveled than before. It was an accomplishment to be sure, but what made me nearly facepalm was the fact that she was still in her armor. "Jenny, I need water." Her eyes were darting around the living room and kitchen, and somehow never managed to land on Star.

I got my last two bottles of water out from under the sink and gave them both to her. "Did you sleep at all?" The dark circles under her eyes had only become more defined.

She shook her head. "Like, fifteen minutes. That's it."

"I'm sorry to hear that. Is it the headaches again?"

The headaches are what we called her nightmares. At least, I think that's what the code is for them. She does have real headaches that come once every couple of months, last for an hour, and give her excruciating pain. "Just the one," she replied before chugging the entire bottle. "I'll be fine. I've got to get back out there and figure out why – "

I put a finger to my lips and pointed behind her to the living room. "We've got company."

"Why?" She turned around and spotted Star. "Oh. Hi."

Star was not at all subtly staring at Jackie, and more specifically, her armor. There's no way she could have forgotten that night in the Iceberg Lounge. "Hi. Are you … _Tex?_ "

Jackie looked at me to see how I wanted her to react. I just shrugged, basically saying, _It's up to you._

She squared up her shoulders and planted a smile on her face. Her dark circles seemed to disappear under the radiance of her smile. "Yes I am. I'm glad to see that you're doing alright."

"I never got a chance to thank you. And Batman. He's been keeping an eye on me lately, it seems."

"Yeah. I don't know why, but he's made it one of his side projects to keep you alive. I think he knows you're a danger magnet."

"Maybe you could ask him something for me. Can you tell him to leave me alone?"

"Sure, but he won't listen to me."

"It's just that …" She bit her lip as she made herself say the words. "I'm leaving Gotham. For good."

"Are you sure?" I asked her. "What about Bruce?"

"If he wants me back, he'll have to come after me. But I don't think that he will."

"In that case," Jackie interrupted, "could you do me a favor?"

"Anything." I think she felt like she owed my sister everything and more.

"Could you take Jenny with you?" I started to argue, but she wouldn't give me the chance. "We're out of food and water, the city is just getting more dangerous, and Mom hasn't heard from either of us in a while. She's got to be worried sick."

"That and there's that whole Tex thing." The two of us agreed over this awkwardly. "She doesn't like it."

"I know, but I can't worry about that right now. Star?"

The actress nodded. "Of course! It'll be a fun road trip with you."

* * *

Oh, yes, it was fun. Not for me, of course.

Getting out of the city was easy enough. Jackie climbed out the window and found the Batpod waiting for her a few blocks away from our place. By the time I had everything put together and in Star's little Mazda, we got ourselves personally escorted out of the city by an itty-bitty Tex on a gigantic black motorcycle. Once outside of Gotham's limits, Tex did a U turn and sped back to Gotham as fast as she was able. I swore she was about to fall off.

It was about dusk by the time we were really moving, and the sky quickly darkened after that. We joined several other cars on the freeway to New York City, and I watched the passing white lines on the road as I drifted off into silence. Star, on the other hand, has her own definition of a good road trip.

" _Oh I ….. miss the mountains. And IiiiIIi miss the rolling hills!_ "

I forgot to take into account that Star participates in musical theater. And she keeps several mix CDs of showtunes in her car at all times. She doesn't have a bad voice, but after the eighth ballad, I was about ready to strangle my driver.

Finally, at an hour into our drive, I snapped. I turned down the volume to nothing but a gasp. "We need to talk, Star."

"I've got more musicals to choose from. _Rent, Next to Normal, Light in the Piazza, Sunset Boulevard, Annie –_ "

"About my sister. Tex."

"Oh." Her face noticeably darkened. "I'm not going to tell anyone."

"Even if it means fame, fortune, and friends?"

"No." She was trying to be particularly insistent, but wouldn't look me in the eye, ostensibly because she was watching the road.

"Are you sure about that? Because the longer Tex is famous, and the more trouble she gets herself into, the more tempting it will be to tell the press that Jackie is Tex. And then do you know what will happen? Jackie's life is going to be flipped upside down. Everyone will be able to get at her. Her enemies, if she develops any, will come after me. She'll be fired, neither of us will have any privacy, and in a worst case scenario, the both of us will be murdered. You will have your fifteen minutes of fame and whatever pittance the National Enquirer will feed you, but you will be overshadowed by Jackie, hated by me and Batman, and someone will occasionally remember you as the jerk that ruined the Harkness girls' lives."

"I wouldn't do that. Tex – Jackie saved my life. I think I owe her my silence."

"But what if the Joker escapes again* and demands that Tex reveal the face beneath the helmet or else he blows up a bus full of small, innocent children? Would you call the GCPD and spill to save some lives?"

"I … what do you want me to say to that?"

"I want you to say, 'No. If Tex wants to save some children, let her save some children. She probably has a plan anyway. Besides, if unmasking Tex could save them, Jenny would probably handle it.' But I want to know your real answer."

"I would just leave it up to you. I'm not going to say anything. My lips are sealed." She mimed zipping her lips, locking them, and throwing away the key.

"What about family and friends?"

"Why would I tell them?"

"Do you get talkative when you drink?"

"I don't drink. Jenny, I'm getting the feeling that you don't trust me. I _planted bombs_ in the Iceberg Lounge for you. And Jackie didn't seem to think it was so bad that she let me know that she's Tex."

"Star, my sister's a bit of an idiot, and she wasn't thinking straight. Furthermore, I can count the number of conversations we've had on my hands. I don't know you, and you're moving out of town. I can't watch you, and that makes me uncomfortable."

"Obviously. I'll have you know that I have kept many a life-changing secret. Cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye."

"Alright." I nodded. "But I feel that in the spirit of full disclosure, I should warn you that I am a vengeful person, and no one hides from me."

I turned the music back up to the previous level, which was now _The Riddle_ from The Scarlet Pimpernel. Star wasn't nearly as enthusiastic now as she hummed along. "For we all are Caught in the middle of one long. Treacherous Riddle."


	19. Chapter Eighteen

Batman flipped through the few files that Gordon had provided him on the condition that they didn't leave the office. All six of them were on counterfeiters residing in Gotham or known to exchange their 'goods' within Gotham's city limits. Jail, jail, paroled, dead, retired … he threw them down on Gordon's desk in frustration and decided to check up on Tex.

"Tex, what's your 20?"

She responded with some gasps of air before beginning. "Gothamite Steel. Had a gang fight. Told everyone to go home." She sounded like she was talking through her teeth. "You?"

"MCU. Gordon and I are running out of options. All these counterfeiters are either taken care of or they found other ways of making a living. If the Riddler is going with counterfeit money, he's getting someone new."

"Are you sure the answer is counterfeit money?"

"It's the only one that works. He who has it doesn't tell it. He who takes it doesn't know it. He who knows it doesn't want it."

"Does it have to be – oh, hang on a minute. Hey get off!" she shouted. Batman had to pull out his earpiece for a moment. "No it's Batman's, and he's the mean one! Now do you want your teeth inside your head, or out?" He waited another second for Tex to get back to him. "What was I saying? Oh, does the money necessarily have to be counterfeit?"

"What was all that about?"

"Nothing!" she answered all too sweetly and quickly. "I am totally not being irresponsible with the Batpod and I am totally hiding it well enough behind large dumpsters so hooligans don't try to 'drive' it."

He listened to her struggle to get the Batpod started and decided to let it go. "Fine. What are you getting at? Do you have another answer to the riddle?"

"Well, assuming the riddle is money related, which we don't know it is, there just isn't any counterfeiting in Gotham – money or otherwise. No art, jewelry, electronics. You guys just don't have the artistic capabilities for that sort of stuff. _Not_ that I'm saying all of you are artistically handicapped or have a fear of colors other than black."

" _Tex ..._ "

"What you people do have is the mob, and you've got dirty and laundered money all over the place."

He ran through the riddle in the back of his head. "Dirty money doesn't fit, and there's too much of it for the Riddler to steal."

"No, I'm thinking about that money the cops use to make covert drug buys, that lightly irradiated stuff that you can track. Cops don't tell it. The mob doesn't know it. And if they know, the cops and the mob don't want it."

"That … makes sense. Go to the SunTrust Bank. If he went back to Wayne Enterprises, he might go back there."

"Or he's already come and gone. He does have a three day head start."

"In which case, he will have left us another clue."

"Okay, I'm on my way. Will Commissioner Gordon be sending any help?"

"He's spread thin as it is. His men are needed to fight the fires. We'll go after the Riddler ourselves."

"Are we talking about literal fires set by the rabble, or is this in a figurative sense?"

He turned off his radio just as Gordon came back to his office. The Commissioner was just closing a call with someone of some importance. "Not a spark of electricity in the entire city, but everyone's got a cell phone that won't die. Did you find anything?"

"Tex thinks the Riddler's going after the mob's money, specifically the ones that have taken our traceable bills. We'll keep an eye on the banks."

"Great. National Guard will be here within the hour with emergency food and water. Maybe then I can spare some men to track down the Riddler."

Batman shook his head. "No. Tex and I will take care of him. I have a feeling he's the one orchestrating and exacerbating this chaos."

"A feeling," he repeated doubtfully.

"Based on good evidence. And some faith on Tex's ability to solve a riddle. I'll keep in touch."

Gordon's phone rang again, and he moved to answer it. "Good luck with – " When he looked up, Batman was gone.

* * *

Batman and Tex somehow managed to arrive at SunTrust bank at about the same time. Tex was just getting off the Batpod when he opened up the cockpit of the Tumbler II. "It looks intact," Batman remarked at seeing the front doors securely closed and locked.

Tex shook her head. " _The entire west wall is blown away. You couldn't have seen it from the street._ "

"Then how did you see it?" She tapped her eye in response. "What else can you see in there?"

" _Just a big metal something. I have no idea what it is._ "

Batman started for the bank, fully expecting Tex to obediently follow him. Which she did. The west wall was indeed completely gone, and the method was immediately evident. A white van with its right half blown away was parked next to the building. A sheet of metal was bolted to the left side so the blast would be directed at the building. It worked. He stepped over the cool rubble and into the bank. The bomb must have gone off about a day ago since he could still smell sulfur and gunpowder.

In the center of the lobby was a steel cylinder about the size of a metal barrel. A screen on it was black. Spray-painted on the front was a green question mark – the signature of the Riddler. "He's been here," said Batman.

" _Really? I hadn't noticed. Oh, look, there's where his guys threw me over the teller's desk._ "

Batman approached the Riddler's device. Two yards in front of the device, he heard a small _click_ at his feet, and he stopped in his tracks. "Tex, stop."

She did as she was told. " _What is it?_ "

"Welcome Batman and Tex!" The cylinder suddenly came to life. The Riddler's face materialized on the screen, reciting a recorded message. "Welcome to SunTrust Bank! Seems the two of you were a little slow figuring out my riddle. What took you so long? I gave you a two day head-start! Anyway, let's play a game. It's called Don't Die. One of you has just stepped on a plate to activate this lovely device of my own creation. As long as you don't step off, you'll be fine. For the next ten minutes. Or five. I'm not sure how long you've got. Let's use the randomizer." The screen changed to an animated slot machine crank that the Riddler's green-gloved hand pulled down. A series of numbers flashed by the screen and ended with _17:43._ "Interesting. So Damsel in Distress, just stay put. Your partner is going to try to save you. Hidden through the bank are five bundles of cash. I want you to bring me one and put it in the slot up here. _However!_ It has to be one of the irradiated bundles that Batman has provided to the police. Bring me the wrong one, and the both of you will be dosed with twelve times the lethal dose of Sarin gas. I know, not much, but I'm trying to be frugal. If the weight changes at all on the plate, boom. So no trading places or handing off money. It's really sensitive. Ready? Your time starts nnnnnnnnnnnow!"

Tex looked at Batman. He was sure her expression was one of horror. "Well? Go!"

" _Batman, I really wish I was the one that stepped on the booby trap!_ " she shouted as she started to run.

He bit his tongue before he could let her know he agreed.

Tex raced around the lobby first, taking up two minutes and fourteen seconds. She knocked over anything that could be knocked over. With her X-Ray vision, she didn't have to look under anything, just through them. She found one bundle of dough. A three minute and twenty six second look through the vault produced two more bundles.

"Bring them to me!" he ordered. He just so happened to have a device on him that could track his own irradiated bills.

" _But the weight can't change!_ " she argued.

"I don't want to hold them. I want to scan them. Stop wasting time!" As soon as she understood what he was getting at, she brought her bounty over and held them up one by one while he scanned them. Negative. Negative. Negative. "Try the private offices," he directed.

She disappeared into the back. For too long, all he could hear was the quiet _beep, beep, beep_ of his time running out. He performed a few deep breathing exercises he had learned from Ducard to calm his heart. Not that he was stressed because Tex wasn't running away. What he was worried about, though, was his partner's self-declared inability to solve complex puzzles. Her doubt was rubbing off onto him. Would she be able to find it?

Six minutes later, she returned with one bundle to give him, holding it like it was a sacred object. He scanned it without ceremony and barely reacted when his device declared it wasn't the right one.

" _Dang it!_ " she screamed. " _Where is that last one?_ "

"Can you scan for radiation traces?" His impatience was seeping into his voice.

" _He dumped a bunch of bananas in the vault and there's old glow in the dark paint scattered all over the place,_ " she grumbled.

"Too many small traces of radiation to get an accurate read," he determined. "You've still got five minutes. Try the windows. When we get down to thirty seconds, I want you to run."

" _That's not going to –_ " She was stopped by a thought, then she ran back to the tellers' windows and jumped over the counter, muttering something about sardines. One by one, she opened the drawers, which had been emptied. Down at the last one, she gave a shout and held up the bundle of money triumphantly. " _Ha ha!_ "

"Bring it here. Make sure it's the right one." He could swear she had an extra spring in her step as she brought it to him. He waved his device over the money, and it beeped joyously. "That's the one."

Tex skipped over to the steel cylinder and pushed the money into the slot. The countdown disappeared, and the screen was covered with much smaller text. She waved him over. " _You're good!_ "

"What was that about sardines?" he asked her as he approached the device.

" _Oh, the only time I ever won a game of Sardines was by finding another group of people and hanging out with them. No one could find me for ages because they were looking for one person in an odd place, not where people normally hang out. Hey, next time there's a life-or-death scenario, can I be the Damsel in Distress?_ "

"Absolutely."

* * *

_If you like pretty gems that sparkle and shine, I invite you to dig in my virtual mine. My first is purple, fit for a king. My second is green where Dorothy did her thing. My third is red; July's birthstone as well. My fourth is seen in strings and is found inside a shell. My fifth is hard, pure carbon and expensive to buy. My sixth is crocodolite striped like the big cat's eye. Seventh is two words, a man-made fake of April's stone. Eighth is very dark and found at Lightning Ridge alone. Now take from each gem one letter in its turn and you will find the stuff for which even the Gods yearn._

* * *

_Ambrosia's Jewelers,_ the sign over the shop declared. It was a small, red brick building with windows and a door that were barred with strong, but decorative bars that looked like waving stalks of grain. The door was closed, but they could see where the door had been forced open.

" _Huh. Totally thought he was going to rob a fancy cafeteria with that riddle. Ambrosia._ "

"Its a family name, and they're quite popular in Europe."

Tex nodded as if she was interested. " _Want to go see if he's left a death trap for us?_ "

The two of them approached the building. Batman held open the door for Tex so she could enter first. As per their agreement, she would be the next victim, assuming that the same sort of trap lay inside for them. Inside, they found smashed glass cases where jewels used to be, and a wooden box next to the emptied cash register.

Batman took a closer look at the damage to the glass cases while Tex took a look at the box. "This seems too small for the Riddler," Batman commented. "They even missed a few jewels." He held up a pearl for emphasis.

" _We've got a bit of a bigger problem._ " She opened the box using only the middle finger from each hand and swinging it back. Inside was a small number-pad with no numbers. To the right of that was a lever and a speaker.

"Welcome back to Don't Die, ladies and gentlemen, states and flying rodents – yeah, that just doesn't flow," said the Riddler, reveling in his Game Show Host persona. "Inside this box is the detonator to a bigger bomb underneath your feet."

At this announcement, the door to the shop snapped shut and bolted itself. Batman ran to the door to try to open it, but they were trapped by a sizable chunk of iron. "It's no good. We'd have to have power tools to break out of here."

"You may also notice that the door is now locked. Don't bother trying to open it. Trust me. The bomb is set to go off in five minutes, and there's only one way to get away from it. Punch in the proper code. Type it in wrong, and the bomb goes off. If you need more time, pulling the lever will reset the timer to ten minutes, but as soon as you let it go, boom! Once you put in the code correctly, the door will unlock and the bomb will be disarmed. However, if you pulled the lever, as soon as you let it go, the bomb will go off regardless of whether you put in the right code. Good luck!"

Tex and Batman exchanged a glance, and looked back at the blank number-pad. " _He totally stole this one from_ Spiral."

"Computer game?"

" _Anime/Manga thing. I had a friend that made me watch it. So, the number-pad is magic square, and the only way to know what order the numbers were in was the number 1 on the top middle key._ "

"Just one problem with that theory. This is an eight key number-pad."

Tex took another look at it and just sighed. " _Four minutes. Are you stressed? I don't feel stressed. Let's put some numbers in._ "

Batman leaned down and looked at the keys from the side at an angle to study them better. "I don't think they're numbers. There are some light groves in the buttons, almost like you're supposed to fit something in them."

Tex copied his stance and examined the number-pad. " _Like what?_ "

"He gave us an awfully long riddle for just one name. We're still supposed to be using it." He went back to the glass cases and showed her where an emerald lay. "It's on top of the glass. The Riddler put it back, which means he wanted us to use it."

They scoured the glass cases, overturning glass, velvet boxes, and necklace displays. The tiny solitaires were not easy to find as they often ended up in the corners or in the edges of the display cases. In the end, they turned up with eight different jewels of various degrees of value. " _How long did that take us?_ "

"A couple minutes. Not long. We've got time."

Tex wasn't convinced, and with her right hand, pulled the lever.

"Tex, I said we've got time!" he scolded.

" _And now we've got ten minutes. It's my turn to be in danger._ "

With one hand, Tex helped Batman sort the delicate jewels that his gloved fingers couldn't handle easily. It took some careful fitting as it wasn't always clear if the gems fit into their slots. Batman took up the job of inspecting the fit and directing Tex. Finally, Batman was satisfied.

On the top row, they had a Diamond, a Pearl, an Emerald, and a Black Opal. On the bottom row, they had a piece of Cubic Zirconium, a Ruby, a bit of Tiger's Eye, and an Amethyst.

"Do you remember the riddle?"

She laughed in response. " _No, I don't. I have a very poor memory._ "

"First is purple, fit for a king. Amethyst." He held a finger over the Amethyst key, but he didn't press it just yet. "Would he go first to last, or last to first?"

" _Go stand by the door and I'll find out. Although in_ Spiral, _they went 9 to 1._ "

"I think he would be more likely to follow the riddle and not the cartoon."

" _Anime,_ " she corrected.

He pressed the Amethyst key. When they didn't blow up, the two of them let out a collective sigh of relief. "Second is green where Dorothy did her thing."

Emerald key. The second letter being M, also the second in Ambrosia.

"Third, July's birthstone."

Ruby. B.

"Fourth, seen in strings." As well as scattered in a street when muggings go horribly wrong.

Pearl. R.

"Fifth is hard, pure carbon and expensive."

" _I don't remember which one is the diamond._ "

Batman picked up both the gems and scraped them across the glass counter. One of them left a clean scratch, and the other just seemed to make a mess. The one that cut the glass was determined to be the diamond. "Sixth, cat's eye." Tiger's eye. "Seventh is man-made." Cubic Zirconium. "Eighth, dark, lightning ridge." He pressed the Black Opal key and waited for something to happen.

For half a minute, there was silence. Then the door's lock slid back and the door crept open. "You're free to go, but take a riddle with you," said the Riddler. "A dozen Royals gathered round, entertained by two who clowned. Each King there had servants ten, though none of them were also men. The lowest servant sometimes might defeat the King in a fair fight. A weapon stout, a priceless jewel, the beat of life, a farmer's tool. What are we talking about here folks?"

The box lapsed into silence. Tex still held the lever, but now with both hands. "Let me take it, Tex," the Batman ordered.

" _Grab me one of the curtain cords. I have a better idea._ "

This he obeyed quickly as he could see where her mind was going. He tied a loop on one end of the cord which he slipped over the end of the lever. Then Tex took the other end and tied a double-half-hitch knot around the counter's leg, holding the lever down.

" _Great. Now what?_ "

* * *

"It's obviously a deck of cards, and Gotham only has three legal casinos," Batman said over the radio.

"Uh huh," Tex said, desperately trying to follow. "They could also be considered Tarot cards. Maybe we should check out the tarot readers too."

"What do they have to steal?" He took Tex's silence as her taking his point. "Only one casino, the largest casino, actually has blackjack or poker tables. It's the only one where actual cards are used."

"Why would you have a casino with only slot machines?"

"Legal gambling isn't big in Gotham."

"Ah. So is that the Luxor I'm headed for?"

"Yes it is. I'll meet up with you when I can."

"Where are you going? We've survived two elaborate death-traps together. I might die if I go alone!"

"I'm following up on a hunch." He turned off the radio and continued to Wayne Enterprises.

Ambrosia's had been too small of a target for the Riddler, and well outside of his typical fare. Cash and technology was more of his area of interest, and there was one bit of technology that he had not been able to get his hands on. Twice. Wayne Enterprises EMP Cannon. With an EMP, the Riddler could make sure that none of Gotham's electronics worked, destroying generators and leaving hospitals, the police, and many others without desperately needed electricity.

The police surveillance at Wayne Enterprises had turned into a massive swarm of SWAT vans. The front doors were wide open and men with body armor and guns were coming in and out. Going through the back door would not be subtle. This would require a costume changed.

Six minutes later, Bruce Wayne emerged from the cockpit of the Tumbler II which was parked a couple blocks away. He walked the few blocks and approached the police barricade. To get some attention, he ducked underneath it.

"Sir, you need to step back," one of the officers in charge told him.

"This is my company," he argued. "What happened this time? Bio-hazard?"

"Robbery. You'd better come with me."

The officer led him to the detective in charge of the investigation. "I'm Detective Robert Parker," the olive skinned, dark haired, and overworked man said. "I'm afraid you've had a few things taken from you. I wonder if you might be able to tell us what they were."

"I can certainly try."

They went down to Research and Development where it looked like a small battle had taken place. At least three bodies were covered in white sheets, and Bruce couldn't tell if they were cops or robbers. Bruce made a bee-line for the EMP cannon only to find its space on the workbench where it should have been completely bare. "What is it?" Detective Parker asked.

"An EMP Cannon. It was supposed to disable electronics in a small area kind of like a pinch, except someone didn't realize that an Electromagnetic Pulse Cannon would also disable itself. Never could get it to fire more than once in an hour."

"Anything else?"

"Doesn't look like it. Sorry, I've got to go talk to my insurance agents. They're going to have a field day with this one."

Bruce quickly made his escape out the back way and took a six block route to return to the Tumbler II, just to make sure no one was following him. When he finally made it back to the Tumbler II, he made a call to Tex.

"Batman!" Tex said cheerfully. "I've got good news!"

"I could use some," he replied, making sure to disguise his voice.

"Ever seen Ocean's Eleven? The security at the Luxor totally would have them baffled. They've practically got their own power station. The Riddler's men did come to try to rob the place, but they got surprised by the bouncers. They're pretty much taken care of."

"And the bad news?"

"The Riddler wasn't with them. They did have a guy dress up as the Riddler to take the fall for it, but it's not him. He really likes taking a back seat to all this."

"No, he was playing us. As soon as the first trap was sprung, he moved in on Wayne Enterprises knowing we would be playing his game for at least a little while."

"What did he take?"

"Something to create an EMP. I don't know how he's going to make it work, though."

"Isn't he supposed to leave clues to his next heist?"

"Unless he was only playing predictable so we would be predictable. It could just be a part of his game. Or maybe we missed a clue."

"So what do we do now?"

"You are going to have a chat with the Commissioner and see what clue this heist was supposed to leave behind. I'm going to find that EMP before things get much worse."


	20. Chapter Nineteen

Once Batman finished his orders, Tex returned to the scene of the would-be crime. The thieves were being carted away by the police, but their belongings were still being examined by a couple officers. She approached them with a cheerful wave. " _Good evening officers._ "

"Thanks for the help Tex," said one of the more portly men with a cigarette clamped between his teeth, "but you need to leave."

" _Batman wanted me to see what the puzzle was supposed to be this time._ "

"Batman's an outlaw vigilante. If anything, we should be doing exactly the opposite. We're packing this all up and taking it back to the MCU."

Tex nodded, taking his point very well. " _The last one was a bomb. The one before that was full of Sarin gas. How bad did you want to die, officer?_ "

He rounded on her and blew a lung-full of smoke into her face. "Are you threatening us?"

She pushed his face away with one finger. " _I have X-ray vision, dummy. I'm better equipped than the bomb squad, which, if you were doing your job right, you should have called in as soon as you got here. If anything, you should be grateful that I'm putting my life on the line for you. Excuse me._ " Tex brushed him aside to get closer to the crates the Riddler's crew was trying to wheel into the casino.

"Alright, step back," the officer ordered. "Let her work. If she wants to get herself blown to hell and back, that's fine by me. Call in the Bomb Squad," he delegated to one of the lower ranking suits.

When her workspace was cleared, Tex walked around the two crates, taking a cursory look inside. The bigger one didn't look dangerous, so she broke the lock with a hand and opened the lid. They seemed to be supplies for setting a similar trap: metal bars, plates to stand on, wiring, trip wires, a couple left-over bananas, a lock, laser pointers, and superglue. Mostly likely these were used to set up for the centerpiece in the smaller box.

Tex declined the use of a crowbar and just used her fingers to pry off the lid of the smaller crate. Snuggling in a layer of straw and tissue paper was a colorful box about the size of a cubic foot with a metal crank. Careful not to disturb the contents too much, Tex removed most of the padding, just to confirm that nothing would be set off if she pulled out the box and its crank.

" _Alright. What makes you tick?_ "

There was a hole at the side where the crank was to be screwed in. With no other information to glean from the outside of the box, Tex decided to screw it in. Then she began to turn it.

"Round and Round big Gotham City," the Riddler's voice sang from the box. "The Batman chased the Riddler. The Riddler thought it was all in fun. POP! Goes the Batman. A penny from Mr. Bruce Wayne! A penny for E. Nygma! That's the way the money goes. POP! Goes the Batman!"

At the last 'pop,' a massive surge of electricity shot out of the Jack-In-The-Box and arced through her hands, which should have fried her. However, Tex barely reacted even in surprise. At the very least, her hands seemed to glow a bit while Tex waited for the booby trap to lose its juice. Then the shock ended and a puppet version of the Riddler popped out of the top holding a sign that said, "Gotcha!"

"What was that?" one of the policemen yelled to Tex.

" _Booby trap,_ " she explained simply. She ripped out the cloth at the bottom of the puppet, exposing the battery inside, but there was nothing more to learn from the inner-workings of the box. So she snapped off the _Gotcha!_ sign and slipped it into her pocket. Then she set the whole contraption on the ground and headed for the Batpod.

"Where are you going?" the first officer asked her.

As she didn't know the answer to that exactly, she didn't answer him. She ducked under the police tape and headed for the parking garage where she had left the Batpod.

"What did you find out?" Batman asked in her ear.

That did make her jump. "Nothing new. He said he was going to take something from Bruce Wayne and keep it for himself, but we already knew that. Then he electrocuted me."

"Are you alright?"

"Yeah. My hands' skin is insulated, so it just felt a little warm. They didn't appreciate it, though." She double checked her hands for any burns or melted silicone, and found only a small melted patch in the center of her right palm.

"Who?"

"My hands. Never mind. So now what? Did the Riddler leave anything at Wayne Enterprises?"

"Just a few bodies. Haven't found any other puzzles. If he contacts me, I'll let you know. In the meantime, I need you to head over to the prison."

Tex found the Batpod and climbed on top of it. "Okay. What's going on there?"

"The prison and Arkham Asylum have their own generators in case of a power outage, but it's been three days. If there's going to be trouble, it's going to be soon. I'm headed for Arkham just in case."

"Okee doke. Sounds good." She kick-started the engine and took off for Skowcroft Prison down by the Narrows.

* * *

Tex shifted her position so she was putting her weight on one side. The Batpod was perfect for taking a nap on, or for lying prone to scope out the scenery. The prison was a massive gray block with high fences and very little vegetation surrounding it. In late September, there wasn't a whole lot of green growing anyway. " _It looks quiet from out here._ "

"That's because we're not in there," said Commissioner Gordon. The two of them were parked a half mile away from Skowcroft on the side of a rarely used road. He had brought coffee for the both of them, but Tex declined the offer. "The prison guards have been dealing with riots all day. What was it that Batman wanted you to do?"

Tex shrugged. " _I think he was hoping I would figure that out._ "

"Have you?"

" _How under control is it in there?_ "

"Fairly. As long as no one else tries to stage another break-out, things should be settling down soon. Workers keep trying to get the other power stations back online, but then someone else crashes into them, and we have to start all over. It's like someone's trying to make sure Gotham stays in the dark, especially here."

" _It's the Riddler. It's always him. You don't see him, but you can feel him in everything that's going on. Did you hear he stole an EMP device?_ "

He nodded. "From Wayne Enterprises. If he sets that off, even the generators won't be able to help us out. The worst place would be anywhere near a hospital or an airport, but with his track record, he'd want to use it on a bank or an art gallery."

" _It's difficult to aim those things. They kind of have a mind of their own. Batman's trying to get some technical specifications from Wayne Enterprises to see how big the scope would be. I think he wants to go looking for it himself._ "

"I don't think we need to worry about him using it yet. The Riddler doesn't seem to do anything without leaving a clue behind first. If he's going to fire on us, he'll give us a chance."

Tex suddenly tensed. " _I see something over by the west wall. I'm just going to take a look around, make sure no one's sneaking out._ " She had a bit of difficulty starting the engine, but once it was going, she saluted Gordon and tore off down the road as if she knew exactly what she was doing.

Which she was absolutely certain she did not.

The disturbance she saw was more like a car parking close to the road that didn't look like it belonged to the police or the prison. By the time she got close enough to get a good look at the BMW, she spotted three individuals climbing over the top of the fence, one of which was in an orange jumpsuit. He was the one being escorted out by the two other beefy men, possibly bodyguards.

The man in the orange suit had a permanent smirk to his face despite the years of being locked up. And for all the time in jail, his slightly silver hair was perfectly kept and he may have even had a manicure. By the look of his face, being sprung from prison wasn't a surprise to him, almost like he had been expecting it. And he was a little impatient that it took so long.

Tex parked the Batpod next to the car and took a relaxed stance in front of the driver's side door with her arms crossed. As the three men approached her, she noticed they were slowing their strides and trying to figure out what do do about her. One of the beefy men pulled out a gun, aiming at her left eye. "I want to see your hands," he growled.

" _Salvatore Maroni, is it?_ " Tex replied. " _I thought you were supposed to be in jail._ "

"I got time off for good behavior," he said, turning up the charm. Even in a jumpsuit, he made for a striking figure. "You must be Tex."

" _That I am._ "

"You're shorter than you look on TV. Paul, put your gun away." His friend reluctantly holstered his pistol, but still kept himself between his charge and Tex. "I think I am in the position of offering you a new job. What do you say to leaving old Bats behind and joining me?"

Tex chuckled and shook her head. " _I think you're only saying that so I'll trust you to make it easier to kill me and collect on the Riddler's reward. Was it $1 million?_ "

"Five, now," Maroni corrected. Both of his bodyguards retrieved their guns and pointed them at her. "But that's a price the Riddler is only offering to me."

" _So that's why he got himself locked up. So he could pass messages on to you. Well, when you go back to jail, tell him that my head is worth $43_ _ **billion**_ _alone, and $5 million for the rest of me is pretty insulting._ " She changed her stance so she was ready to move at a second's notice.

"Well, I'll take what I can get. Boys?"

" _They'll hear you,_ " she warned.

Reluctantly, the two of them holstered their guns and proceeded to rush her. Tex waited for them to come down to her level before grabbing Paul's hand, twisting it behind his back, and pushing his shoulder into the ground. His partner hesitated before launching a fist at her. She grabbed his fist as best she could, crushing it in her hand and breaking at least a couple fingers. However, this made her lose her hold on Paul. He wriggled out of her grasp and tried to put her into a headlock.

Tex used Paul's body as a counterbalance so she could kick his partner with both feet, then wrap her legs around his neck. Paul tried to pull her away, but it only served to pull the other man off his feet, and the three of them fell to the ground and tumbled their own separate ways. Tex rolled towards the car and took a moment to tear her nails through one of the tires and cut a brake line or something important on the underside of the BMW. One of the men scrambled to his feet and dragged Tex away from the car.

Suddenly, she found herself practically dogpiled by the two of them, which was fine by her because their faces were in perfect reach. She broke Paul's nose, poked the other guy's eye, and snapped someone's wrist. She kind of hoped it was Paul's. In the end, she was able to squirm out from under them and kicked them both in the head. If they didn't have a concussion, they were too dazed to follow her.

Sal Maroni had taken off running as soon as the fight started, and unable to use the BMW or the Batpod, he opted to go on foot as fast as he could. " _Really?_ " she sighed, and climbed aboard the Batpod.

A few moments later, Tex spun the beast of a bike to a halt in front of Maroni, who was quite out of breath from his run. "So you're the one everyone's talking about. I can see why."

" _You're going back to jail, Mr. Maroni. If you play nice with me,I'll play nice with you._ "

Maroni gave her a flirting eye, hoping to sway her into just letting him run, but there was no way for him to know that she wasn't actually looking at him. She was keeping an eye on the prison behind him. Finally, he gave up. "I guess there's nothing I can say to change your mind."

" _Nope. Climb on._ "

With a disgraced sigh, he got on the Batpod behind Tex and held on to her waist as she hurtled off towards Skowcroft's north entrance. As she stopped by the gate, a guard came out to greet them. "Another runaway?" he said.

Maroni climbed off of the Batpod. "Hardly," he protested.

" _He was kidnapped by a rival gang. I think they wanted to kill him,_ " Tex said. " _I would keep a closer eye on him if you can._ "

A few more guards appeared from the prison and ran to the gate. "We can take it from here," the gate guard said.

" _I'll just watch. Okay? Okay._ " She put one foot on the ground to keep her balance, and to make it clear that she wasn't moving just yet.

The gate was opened and Salvatore Maroni was marched back inside. "I'll see you later, Tex," he said in parting, and she smiled sardonically at the sentiment. Not that he could tell.

" _Have things quieted down in there?_ " Tex asked the guard, indicating the prison with a nod of her head.

"We've got it covered. Thanks for catching Maroni," he answered automatically. "You can go."

It wasn't until she saw his orange jumpsuit disappear inside the prison doors that she started the Batpod back up, turned it around, and sped back into town.

* * *

Tex took another sweep through the streets. The riots seemed to have died down, or at least have gotten under control with the help of the GCPD and the National Guard handing out basic supplies. She would have stopped for a bottle of water if she thought she had the time. Eventually, her rounds became more of a drive through traffic just to clear her head.

 _That looks like my bike_ , Tex thought wistfully as she came up behind a red Ducati driven by a man in a denim jacket with a black motorcycle helmet. She got closer to the driver and focused on the license plate. CHD 895. _Hey, that IS my bike!_

The driver didn't have to look back to know that Tex was following him on the Batpod, and gaining ground. He upped his speed appropriately, and took a side alley that he knew was too narrow for the behemoth. Tex yanked the Batpod around the next corner, which became a wider turn than she was intending, and followed the alley as best she could, hoping to overtake him. She made a right around the next street only to see her Ducati zipping away.

" _Oh, no, you don't._ "

She gunned the engines more than she had dared to before for fear of losing control of the already too-big-for-her beast of a bike, but losing her Ducati again would be more painful than Batman's wrath over a few scratches. There's no way the Batpod would be hurt more than she would anyway. So she gained on the thief.

For an absurdly long amount of time, the driver just went straight, preferring to dart around cars and obstacles instead of taking shortcuts through alleys. When he did finally make a turn, it was down a road Tex could obviously use to follow him, and she was gaining fast. " _You are not stealing my Ducati again. I worked too hard for someone like you to just take it,_ " she grumbled under her breath.

Right. Left. Right. Left. His turns weren't exactly random, and they were starting to get predictable. Tex grinned at the thought of outsmarting him. And stopping him. And punching him in the face for taking her motorcycle.

He turned left onto Main Street. When Tex made the same turn, annoyingly wide, the driver was already halfway down the street and driving around a semi truck parked in the middle of the road. Mounted to the back where the trailer was supposed to go was something resembling a steampunked autocannon, but with the barrel of a railgun. Tex grimly realized that the driver was baiting her with her own Ducati, and she fell hook, line, and sinker.

The gunner at the cannon turned it on and fired it directly at Tex. She ducked reflexively, but she wasn't hit by any projectile. Instead, her vision went black and she lost control of the Batpod as its engine cut out and it skidded to a stop. On top of that, she couldn't move her hands to apply the brakes. The Batpod drifted sideways and Tex fell off it before it rolled, trapping her legs.

Tex stayed still for several moments, just breathing and taking stock of her limbs. The air from her nose was hitting the metal of her helmet and she inhaled quite a bit from her previous breath. So the air filtration system in her helmet wasn't working. Neither was the vision, targeting, tracking, or radar systems in the lenses. In short, she was blind and half deaf with a piece of radio stuck in her ear and no speakers working.

The Batpod was lifted off of Tex's legs, and before she could thank them, several hands pinned her arms behind her back, attached handcuffs around her lifeless wrists, and lifted her into a vehicle.

And the only thought she had as the doors closed on her was, _So that's where that EMP cannon went._


	21. Chapter Twenty

Alfred insisted that he at least get some rest. Bruce settled for coffee.

"Tex is out there doing my job," he protested.

"And you'll be doing her no good if you're falling asleep at the wheel, figuratively and literally," his wise old butler reminded him. "The two of you are supposed to be alternating your schedules anyway so you can get some rest."

"Not right now. The Riddler has the EMP Cannon and Arkham Asylum is nearly out of power. If the Joker or the Scarecrow get free, we'll be in even more trouble, and I'm almost on the verge of finding the Riddler." He downed his entire mug of coffee in nearly one gulp. "Do we have anything stronger?"

"That was the stronger coffee. But I'll break out the caffeine pills."

Bruce mumbled a thanks as Alfred left the Batcave. He shooed a bat away from one of the consoles and continued to search for major disturbances in the city. Power was sporadically returning to some places, mostly hospitals, the water mains, and nursing homes, but only in bursts and fits. Most people, if they were left in the city, were gathered in parks where the National Guard could take care of them. If they weren't there, they were raiding the stores and abandoned homes. The police were trying to stop as many of them as they could, but they couldn't prevent everything.

Then, to Bruce's right, the Jeopardy theme song rang out from the phone the Riddler had left him. He plugged in the phone to trace the call, and answered it. "Riddler?" he growled.

"Oh, Batman, we're almost through," the Riddler sang joyously. "Just two riddles are left for you. Solve them soon and Tex won't die."

"What did you do to her?" Bruce said slowly and evenly. The ice in his voice was nearly enough to strangle the man through the phone.

"Ahem," he said, annoyed at being interrupted. "The riddle: What am I that has three lives? Light enough to caress the sky, gentle enough to soothe the skin, and hard enough to break through stone."

He glared at the ease of this one, almost like the Riddler was now insulting his intelligence. Clouds, water, and ice. "The answer's water. Now where is Tex?" he snapped.

The Riddler ignored his question. "Did you know that her hands are mechanical? I've never seen anything like it. They don't like Electro. Magnetic. Pulses." He let the words hang there, just to let them sink in. "Anyway, you've got an hour to find her. That is, if you aren't too busy with other things." He abruptly hung up only for another alert to sound from the computer.

Arkham Asylum's defenses were falling, as he knew they would, and the staff was finally putting in a call to 911. Criminals were escaping, and mostly likely the Joker and the Scarecrow would be among them. Allowing them to roam the city was about to happen on his watch.

So save Tex and let the Arkham crowd run free, as well as run the risk of letting the Riddler escape?

Catch the Riddler and risk killing Tex and allowing the Arkham escapees to slip through his fingers too?

Or help the police at Arkham and let the Riddler go after he kills Tex?

He suited up in a matter of seconds. As soon as he was in his Tumbler II, his mind was made up.

 _I'm sorry, Tex,_ he thought, _but you're on your own._

Then he aimed his vehicle for the Narrows and drove straight for Arkham.

* * *

Arkham Asylum was in a state of panic. That much was obvious. The residents had spilled out into what passed as a courtyard through the front doors, and both the staff and the police were struggling to regain control. The gates were holding the fighting as best they could, but any minute, the struggle would certainly take them down. The arrival of the Tumbler II seemed to only encourage the inmates. They could remember the Scarecrow's attacks and remembered how the sound of the Batman's vehicle only meant pain was coming.

If he had gotten here earlier, he could have used some tear gas grenades to break up the fighting, but the police were just as mixed in as the inmates and there was no way they could get out before the grenades activated. Batman stopped the Tumbler II at the gates of Arkham and climbed out of the cockpit to join the fray. Gonna have to do this the old fashioned way.

As soon as he entered the gates of Arkham Asylum, the focus of the fight immediately changed. "The Batman's here," was whispered through the crowd faster than an electric bolt. To the policemen, this was a relief as the inmates changed their minds about who was the greater danger.

The inmates practically swarmed the Batman, knowing that sometimes sheer force can overpower training and talent any day. Well, most any day. They surrounded him, attacking him with rocks, sticks, lunch trays, sharpened toothbrushes, and any other weapon they had been able to obtain. Fortunately for him, his armor was able to deflect most of those blows.

These men weren't determined fighters, just desperate. Taking advantage of that, Batman began by throwing several Batarangs into the crowd. This discouraged several of the attackers and gave him the chance to push through them to find the instigator, if there was one. Someone jumped on top of him, grabbing at his neck, but Batman was in no mood for these sorts of antics. Grabbing his arm, he threw the inmate over his back and punched him in the neck to paralyze him for a bit.

Others tried to follow the one man's lead and threw themselves at Batman. One by one, he dealt with them without prejudice. Kick one man in the head, punch another in the face, break someone's arm. Each blow had to be a disabling one. He had no time to spend on wearing people down or worry about not hurting them too much. He stepped on someone's leg hard enough to sprain their knee, yanked another man's hand up until his wrist snapped, land an elbow in a nose hard enough to break it.

Batman pushed himself closer and closer to the doors of the asylum, and the ferocity of the inmates got worse and worse. Some were even trying to bite his arms, which cost a few men their teeth. He dodged knife slashes to his face and metal bars from the fence being swung at his head. Most of those blows ended up hitting other inmates. That was one advantage he had with this crowd; they weren't united in their efforts, fighting for themselves, so they ended up fighting each other as much as the police or Batman.

Some inmates had taken refuge on the roof of Arkham and were throwing down bricks. Somehow, they managed to hit their own friends instead of the police. Batman sidestepped one large bit of debris, which hit an inmate wielding a dead chainsaw, knocking him out cold.

Standing on the steps to the entrance with _Arkham Asylum_ emblazoned on the arch above him, the Scarecrow in an orange jumpsuit oversaw the destruction. He had a pile of weapons at his feet which he was handing out to whoever came through the door. Both cops and inmates, Batman noted. As soon as the Scarecrow noticed the Batman heading towards him, he picked up what looked like an oxygen tank or fire extinguisher with a hose attached to it and aimed it at him. "Batman! Are you coming to make an appointment?"

"I already have the antidote, Crane," Batman replied. He punched an inmate that had gotten in his way.

"But what about Gotham's finest?" he taunted.

"They do too. Nearly everyone in Gotham got the antidote."

The Scarecrow dropped the tank unceremoniously. "Well, there are other ways to go about this." He picked up a bottle of hairspray that someone had probably confiscated, and a lighter. Batman threw up his cape to protect his face just as the Scarecrow lit his miniature flamethrower. "I told you you needed to lighten up!"

Batman rushed the Scarecrow, knocking him off his feet. The flames licked at his face and arms, but they went out before they did much damage beyond a first degree burn. Then he pulled off Crane's mask and dragged him back inside the asylum. As soon as he found an empty cell, he threw Crane inside and locked the door with a pair of handcuffs.

While inside Arkham, Batman thought it best to see if an old friend of his was still there. The Joker, now patient #4479, resided in his own high security cell on the fourth floor. Batman took the steps two at a time until he got to the floor he wanted. The entire level was eerily dark and quiet, especially when contrasted with the level of noise outside.

The Joker's cell was at the very end of the hall and had the thickest steel doors out of all the other rooms. They weren't so much to keep everyone else out, but to keep that fearsome force contained. Batman peeked through the small slat of a window. The cell was darker than the rest of the hall, so he took a flashlight off his belt and shone it inside.

The walls were covered in red words, mostly _HA HA HA!1! Joker rules!_ and _DIE BATMAN DIE!_ Sitting in the center of the room was a man in the same inmate jumpsuit with stringy green hair. He turned to the light just slightly so Batman could see the scars on his face. Then the Joker returned to his previous position.

Batman tested the door, making sure it couldn't open. When it stayed shut, he left satisfied. The Joker was still locked up safely away.

He returned to the fight outside, which had died down some due to their riot leader being neutralized. The police were getting control back, but slowly. Batman rejoined the fight, pulling a few inmates away before they killed the asylum staff trying to control them, giving them the chance to be restrained. After several more minutes of fevered but meaningless fighting, the inmates settled down, mostly due to being put in restraints.

Batman checked the time. It had been forty-five minutes since the Riddler issued his challenge, and he still had to find where he was holding Tex. He figured it would be the docks since there wasn't any other notable source of water in Gotham beside the river. Even though that was his best guess, there was still a lot of docks to go through. He jumped back inside the Tumbler and raced for the harbor.

* * *

Batman's Tumbler II roared onto the docks. The old, rotten wood threatened to give way beneath the wheels of his tank, but either through Batman's sheer willpower or pure rage, the docks held.

At one end, the Riddler stood next to an empty port with cranes hovering over the water. He wore his trademark green suit and bowler hat, had a heavy cane, and was disdainfully looking at a pocketwatch. Batman parked the Tumbler II several yards away, opened the hatch and darted out without bothering to close it back up. "Where is she?" he roared.

The Riddler sniffed. "You're three minutes late. We've already started the game. Sorry, Bat-breath."

Batman grabbed him by his neck, nearly crushing his trachea. "What did you do to Tex?"

" _On second thought,_ " the Riddler gasped, " _since you made the effort, I'll give you a shot._ " Batman let him go and he took a few moments to recompose himself and get his breath back. "It's simple, really. Two men drive off a bridge in two identical vehicles. However, only one manages to survive. What kind of vehicle was it, and how did the one man survive?"

"How is that supposed to help?" he said through bared teeth.

The Riddler only glanced at the water. Batman took a closer look and could somewhat make out the taillights of at least two cars. "I hear humans can only be without oxygen for four minutes before they sustain brain damage. Best get cracking."

Batman took a specialized full face oxygen mask designed for diving off his belt, strapped it to his face, and activated the 'backpack' shape for his cape so it zipped up into a convenient pack on his back. Then he took a running dive into the river.

A quick look around the murky water showed five vehicles slowly sinking in the river. He swam towards the closest one, a minivan, and tried to look through the windows, but they were blocked by newspapers and garbage bags taped to the inside. Couldn't figure out where she was that way. So this was the game the Riddler wanted him to play. Solve the riddle, and he would know which one Tex was in. Or he could go break open all the windows so he could look inside each one and waste precious time.

Five vehicles. A minivan, a pickup truck, a sedan, a commercial van, and an SUV. Well, that narrowed down the choices. How does one man get out of a flooded car when another can't. As far as he knew from the riddle, the men both had the same advantage, but they made different decisions.

The white, windowless commercial van seemed like a good option for a kidnapping. If anything, he was going to at least try that first. Batman wasn't a bad swimmer by any stretch of the imagination, but the cold water was slowing down his muscles, and the imminent caffeine crash wasn't helping any. Still, he gave it all he was worth. Tex was depending on him.

When he finally reached the doors to the back of the van, he found the doors were unlocked, but that wasn't the problem. The water wasn't letting him move that big of a piece of metal without several thousand pounds of resistance. He gave it almost a Herculean effort, but the door would barely budge for him. If only it would just move aside. He was about to pull out the miniature grenades and just blow the door off its hinges when another thought entered his mind.

If only the door would move aside like the doors of a minivan.

Batman immediately abandoned the commercial van and swam over to the minivan on the other end of the line, cursing himself the entire way for not taking a better look.

The door wasn't locked and slid open much easier than the other van. Immediately, he was greeted by the sight of Tex suspended in the water just behind that door. She was handcuffed to a hand-hold just above the door frame, and her normally shining red eyes were black glass. Tex bobbed lifelessly in the van as it sank even lower.

Working with blinding speed, Batman picked the locks on the handcuffs and pulled Tex out of the van. Hoping that his grappling cable would work underwater, he aimed it at the docks, held on to her waist, and fired. He felt the satisfying impact of the hook coming in contact with something solid, and he pulled the both of them in. The drag created by Tex nearly pulled off his arm, but he only gripped her tighter.

His head broke the water first. Tex was thrown onto the dock first before Batman pulled himself out. She wasn't moving, and her helmet made it impossible to know if she was breathing. Water bled out from the edges of her armor, but it didn't seem to be making a difference. Batman searched her neck for the switch that retracted the helmet, but it was nowhere to be seen.

One of Tex's hands grabbed his ankle. For a second, he thought she had regained consciousness, but it was only that hand that could move, not the entire arm. Only the prosthetic could move. It pointed at Tex's head, begging him to move it for her. So he picked it up and set it at Tex's neck.

The hand scrambled a bit, pulling itself into place, then it pushed the helmet off Tex's head starting from her chin and moving over her face. Batman let his cape fall out of its backpack shape to form a sort of privacy curtain, and turned her head to the side to let some water drain out.

That seemed to do the trick. Tex suddenly started coughing up water. Then she turned herself over and retched out nearly a gallon of river water from her stomach. After a bit more coughing, she threw up nearly the same amount again. Behind his cape, a few dock-workers began to cheer for Tex. Batman patted her back as she got the last of it out. "Are you alright?" he asked her.

"I better be." She spat out a mouthful of water. "What took you so long?"

"Uprising at Arkham."

"Oh." Then she dry heaved. "Of all the ways to die, drowning is my least favorite."

"I'm sorry, Tex."

She wiped some muck off her mouth with a limp left hand. The rest of her face was covered with mud and her hair had soaked up quite a bit of water as well. "I signed up for this," she replied coldly as she unzipped her jacket and shook out more water. "We both know that."

"What happened exactly? How did he catch you?"

"I was chasing my Ducati. I was going to get it back. Then he hit me with that EMP Cannon and I couldn't see anything after that. Couldn't even move my hands." Her right hand twitched a bit. "This sucks. Did you at least catch the Riddler?"

"I don't know yet. I haven't checked." She raised an eyebrow at that. He gave her a hand to help her to her feet, but kept her hidden behind his considerably larger frame. "I should warn you, we do have company."

Tex gave a sigh, which made her cough some more. "I can't see anything out of this helmet. I'm going to have to give it a look-see before I do anything more with it." She pulled helmet back over her head and slid the black glass eyes away so she could see. "How do I look?" Her voice was muffled just a bit.

"Terrible," he answered honestly. Then he led her over to the Tumbler II. She walked a little slower and couldn't stay in a straight line. Once they reached it, he handed her the key. "I'll let you do the honors since you almost died."

Confused, but too tired to question him, she pushed the Hatch-Open button. The plates of armor shifted and pulled back, releasing a white gas and revealing a snoring Riddler. "That's … why is he in there?"

"I knew that as soon as I was gone, he wouldn't be able to resist the Tumbler with all that high-end technology and weaponry, so I left a sleeping gas snare inside for when he tried to steal it. Now all we have to do is deliver him to Gordon."

" _You_ can drop him off. I'm going home."

"I'll take you home."

"I can make it. I'll be fine, Batman. Just take him downtown. And I'll see you in a few days after I've had a nap."

* * *

The Riddler stirred only minutes away from the MCU. "That was clever ..." he said, his words slurring together. "Such a lovely tank you've got. It looks like something I saw at Wayne Enterprises."

"What did you do with the EMP Cannon, Nygma?" Batman growled.

"Gave it back to Mr. Wayne. Darn thing doesn't work that well; no decent range. I'll take it back once they've developed it more."

"Then why did you steal it in the first place?"

"Because I could and it was cool. Then I thought, why not use it on the Batmobile? But that would have been just _awful_ to do to this beauty." He tried to reach out with his handcuffed hands, but a chain trapping his arms to his body kept him from doing so. "I thought a test run on Tex would be a better option, and it worked out much better than I expected. It's too bad that I had to kill her. I would have loved to study those hands."

Batman decided not to correct him. "You'll be spending the next twenty years behind bars."

"That's fine by me," he replied simply. The Batman broke his gaze from the road to look at him to see if he was serious. "My connections in Gotham are poor. I need a better network. What? You thought I was just minorly inconvenienced when you dragged me in to see Gordon? Oh, no. See, I like to talk. And make friends. Lots of powerful friends. I'm new to this place. I just wanted to show everyone what I was capable of. And now that I've had my fun, I'll go live rent free with decent food and lots of folks that will want to do my bidding. The next time I want to play with Gotham, you're not even going to know I was involved." He leaned closer to his driver and whispered in his ear. "How does that make you feel, Batman?"

Batman stopped in front of the police station and turned to the Riddler. "When one does not know what it is, then it is something; but when one knows what it is, then it is nothing."

The Riddler snickered. "Touché."


	22. Chapter Twenty-One

"Jenny, go get the door," Dad ordered. "It's for you."

I pulled my nose out of my book, not even aware that someone was knocking. "How do you know it's for me?"

"Because they're knocking."

Oh, right. I got off the living room floor and went to answer the door. Standing on our _Welcome_ mat was James Carroll dressed in scrubs and wearing a stupid grin. "James, hi. What are you doing here?"

"The power's back in Gotham. I came to get you."

"No, I mean what are you doing _here_? I never told you I was staying with my parents, much less where they live."

"Imogen told me," he said. It was a lie because Imogen was also out of town, but considering I hadn't exactly covered up my tracks and my parents' address was in the phonebook, I let it slide. Besides, I did need a ride back.

"Alright, come on in. Let me pack my bags real quick." I led him into the living room where my dad was reading over a report and Mom was watching a movie on her laptop. "James, this is my dad, Jeremy, and my mom, Judy. Dad, this is James Carroll. Mom." I walked over to her and tapped her am.

Mom paused her movie and looked up, catching the sight of James. She pointed at him, then brought her fist up to her chin, touched her chin with her thumb and curled her pointer finger up and down. _Who is this?_

 _James Carroll,_ I spelled out with my hand. _My stalker. He's giving me a ride back to Gotham,_ I explained further.

Dad saw that part. _Is it bad?_ he signed.

I shook my head and I replied. Then I went to my old room – now the guest bedroom – threw all my stuff back into my bag, cleaned everything else up as best I could, and hauled my stuff out my door. Jackie may be annoyingly frugal, but at least she knows how to pack light, a skill I had yet to acquire. "Okay, I'm ready to go." James took my bag to his car while I kissed my parents goodbye.

Dad gave me a hug. "Make sure Jackie's okay, alright?"

"I'll make sure she Skypes you tonight," I assured him. Then I hugged Mom and gave her a kiss on the cheek. I left them with a parting _I love you._

James was holding open the door of his white 2012 Camaro. I whistled appreciatively. That must have cost him a pretty penny. The life of an anesthesiologist had been good to him. "You like it?"

"I definitely can say that I do." I sat down in the passenger seat and cracked open one of my chemistry textbooks. I was supposed to have an exam yesterday, but no doubt it would have been delayed due to the Riddler blackout. "Sorry, I'm not going to be great company," I said as he sat down in the driver's seat. "I have to study."

"That's alright." He backed out of the driveway and started for Gotham. "So, your Mom's – "

"Deaf? Yes she is." I chose not to elaborate further.

* * *

My apartment, amazingly, wasn't ransacked or looted. Jackie had cleaned up the place, restocked the fridge and pantry, and had even baked some _Welcome Home! c_ ookies. She squealed in delight when I walked in and practically tackled me with a hug. "You're home!"

"I take it Batman hasn't been great company." I tried to hug her back with all the stuff in my hands.

"He's so needy," she whispered conspiratorially. "How's Mom and Dad?"

"Good, they're both good. Mom wants you to call her." I pushed her off me so I could set down my bag.

"Internet's not back yet." She stuck her bottom lip out in a pout.

"I saw your bike parked outside. That's a relief. How did you find it?"

"Uh, that's kind of a weird story. Let's just say Stapleton was using it to get me to follow him around Dartmoor until I got caught in the Grimpen Mire."

"Wait. Dartmoor is Gotham. Stapleton would be the Riddler. Is the Mire the Narrows?" Her code names were starting to get convoluted.

"I'm going to say yes."

"Did you give back the Batpod?"

"No. The Hound got to it and kind of broke it."

I shook my head at that one. It was too something in the day for all these Sherlock Holmes references. "Okay, I'm going to go play some softball."

"Ooh, do you need a pitcher?"

"Actually, I have someone else in mind."

* * *

Alfred answered the door within a minute of my knocking. "Hi Alfred. Is Mr. Wayne available?"

"In what sense of the word, Ms. Harkness?" he replied.

"For softball. And for a chat concerning the fact that I facilitated the breakup."

"Come inside. I'll see if I can find him." Alfred ushered me into a parlor and left to go look for him.

Wherever Mr. Wayne was hiding, it was really good. After a couple minutes of waiting, I started to study the art on the walls. On in particular, a field of daisies, held my interest more than the others. What can I say? They're one of my favorites.

"Alfred said you wanted to see me," said Mr. Wayne, almost making me jump. I hadn't heard his footsteps. He had been working on a car, as evidenced by the grease stains on his hands and the blue jumpsuit.

"Yes, I did."

"I take it you heard I broke up with Star." He was one that liked to cut to the chase.

"Actually, I helped drive her to New York City."

"Oh."

"So … whenever I have a breakup, or I'm frustrated, or I'm mad at my sister, I like to spend some time swinging a bat around and occasionally hitting a softball. I was going to go to the batting cages at GCC, and I thought you might want to join me."

"Violence isn't really my thing, Jenny," he said, trying to decline the offer.

"Psh. It's not violence. It's a competitive sport. I also play on a community co-ed softball team that plays tonight at six. We're terrible, but it's fun. We're always short a few players and could use another person."

Mr. Wayne chuckled and wiped some engine grease off his hands with a dirtier cloth. "You know what? I've been stuck inside this house for too long. You've sold me. Let me go get cleaned up and presentable. Go ahead and raid the kitchen. Alfred won't mind."

"Thanks, but my sister just fed me a plate-full of cookies."

"I'll be down in a second, then." Then he went bounding off upstairs to his room. A few minutes later, he returned wearing a t-shirt, jeans, and sneakers. "What do you think?"

"You'll do. Come on." I took him outside to my rental car. It was the cheapest thing I could find: a Dodge Spirit. But it worked, and that was the point. In a city like Gotham, the less classy your car is, the less likely it is to be stolen. "I have to warn you, the passenger door doesn't open from the inside, and the window's stuck."

"It's fine."

I pulled out of the courtyard and headed for campus. "So, I've got to ask you something. Star couldn't ever find you during the blackout, but you said you were stuck in the house. Where were you? Really."

"Really? It's actually kind of embarrassing."

"What, did you get buried under your My Little Pony collection?"

"No, I got myself locked in my panic room and I couldn't get out."

"Because the power was out?"

"I … forgot the code," he admitted sheepishly.

"That is bad." I chuckled despite myself.

"What did you do with your unexpected vacation?"

"Ate crackers and memorized enzymes, mostly."

"That's right, you're studying Chemistry. What do you want to do when you graduate?"

"Work in a lab, I guess. I like researching."

"What do you _really_ want to do?"

"Be a Private Investigator, but I don't have the training or experience to get a license."

"A PI?" He leaned back to examine me. "I could see it."

"Thanks."

"So you must have left town at some point. What else did you do?"

"I went to stay with my parents."

"You and Jackie?"

"No, just me. Jackie wanted to stay behind and watch the apartment, and Star needed someone to help keep her awake."

I watched Mr. Wayne's reaction to that. He grew a bit colder and his jaw tensed, but he didn't ask what was on his mind. "That must have been fun, seeing your parents."

"It was. The last time I saw them was last Christmas, and both of them managed to be called in to work at some point, and I spent most of the week pretending to study. This time, I actually was studying."

We arrived at the baseball batting cages a couple minutes later. I opened Mr. Wayne's door and then got my equipment out of the trunk. He kindly carried my duffel bag, I took my bats, and we went to the first empty batting cage. "Do you want to go first?" I asked him.

"No. I think I'll want to watch you first to see how you do it."

I put on my helmet, had Mr. Wayne turn on the pitching machine, and took my spot at 'home plate.' Mr. Wayne stood to my left behind the net, studying my stance carefully. The first ball launched and I hit it away in a perfect run to first. "Have you ever played softball before, Mr. Wayne?" _Crack!_ Another hit.

"We're not at work, Jenny. You can call me Bruce. And I played tee-ball in elementary school. Does that count?"

I swung and missed the next one. "Baseball is one of those things you just don't forget." _Crack._ There we go. "Do you need a brief tutorial?"

"Right hand goes on top, right?"

"Yes it does." The pitching machine ran out of balls, so I collected them and reloaded it before I left the batting cage and handed Mr. Wayne one of my other bats. "No better way to learn than baptism by fire." He went in and copied my previous position. His first two swings missed terribly. "Hold the bat more in your fingers, not the palms of your hands. Your fingers are stronger than the rest of your hand." He repositioned and hit the next pitch perfectly. "Nice."

He hit a few more balls into the nets. He was definitely getting better and better, even if he missed a couple. When the pitching machine ran out of balls, we gathered them back up again. "Does it pitch any faster?" he asked.

I reset the machine and started it up again. This time, the balls' velocity was a little higher. "Something tells me you've done more than just tee-ball." I stood behind the nets protecting the machine.

"I had a baseball phase in high school," he admitted. _Crack!_ Another ball went over my head.

"I see. Well, I think now that you've got a weapon in your hands and are sending flying projectiles in my general direction, it's the perfect time to talk about why I brought you out here."

 _Crack._ "Does it have to do with Star?"

"Yes. I'm not going to lie about that. Before Star left for New York, she came to see me because she was ready to leave town, but wasn't sure that she should."

"You're the one that convinced her to leave?" _Crack!_

"Yes and no. Star needed a sounding board, and you weren't available." _Crack!_ "I helped her clarify her thoughts so she could figure out her priorities. I did not tell her to leave you."

"But you didn't try to stop her."

"No. That was your job."

He missed the next one. "I know."

"I did try to convince her to stay, but her mind was made up. It was her decision entirely."

"I should have been there for her." _Crack!_ He nearly broke the bat with that one. "No wonder she left. I tried my best to spend time with her." I know. I'm the one that scheduled his meetings.

"Sometimes the world just conspires against us."

"Yeah, but the point of a relationship is that it's stronger than that. No matter what happens, it can weather anything the world throws at us. Star clearly didn't think we could have made it because when it came down to it, I just wasn't there." _Crack!_ His frustration with himself was coming through his attitude more and more. He wasn't mad at Star, or even the growing number of women that had come and gone in his life. He blamed himself for it all.

"You should tell her what happened and clear up the misunderstanding."

"I did," he admitted. Ah.

"Hey Jenny," a man in his twenties and a baseball shirt called as he ran to the batting cage from the softball diamond. It was Robert, one of the regulars. "We're starting a game in a few minutes. Want to join?"

"What do you think, Bruce? Want to play a game?"

"Sure, as long as there's room for me." The pitching machine was empty, so I turned it off and he set the bat against the net.

"Actually, I think the other team could use you more. They're short a couple people," said Robert. "We'll be waiting for you." He trotted back to the diamond.

The two of us gathered up the balls, returned them to the pitching machine, and hurried to join the game.

* * *

"Jenny, you're up first," said Robert, my team captain for tonight. Charlie, the opposing team captain, was more than happy to have someone like Bruce join his team. In all fairness, both our teams could use whatever talent we could get. "Let's start out strong."

I stepped onto the plate with my helmet on and my bat ready to strike. "Hey batter, batter," the catcher, also known as Bruce, teased. I couldn't afford to turn around and give him a piece of my mind. Instead, I focused on the wind up, and the pitch.

"Strike one!" said the umpire when I missed my first one. Mr. Wayne – or Bruce as he wanted to be called tonight – sent it back to the pitcher. He wound up and sent it straight back to me. This time, my bat connected and I sent the softball somewhere out by second base. I dropped the bat and raced for first base. When I got there, they were still trying to pick up the ball, so I decided I could steal second as well. My team cheered for me and for the next guy who stepped up to the plate.

The next two people struck out. The third person hit the ball and we both moved up a base. I got ready to move as the next person stepped up to bat. Strike one. Ball one. _Crack!_ Before I knew where the ball was going, I took off for home plate. Someone caught the ball and was about to throw it home to Bruce. I slid into the plate just as he caught the ball. When the dust cleared, the umpire declared, "Safe!"

"Better luck next time, Bruce," I said as I went back to the bench. I was impressed that no one had connected him with Bruce Wayne, the Prince of Gotham yet. Maybe it was because no one could imagine that Bruce Wayne played softball with a borrowed glove from me.

The next person on my team struck out, so we switched sides. I traded my helmet for a glove and set out for the right field. The first batter on Bruce's team hit the ball straight to the pitcher, who caught it and he was out. The next one hit the ball into my field. I picked it up and threw it to first base, but she was safe.

Next up was Bruce. He got himself a foul ball, then hit it into the left outfield. He made it to first, but his teammate didn't make it to second before she was tagged out. "Having fun yet?" I asked him.

"Oh yeah. Loads. Alfred's going to be proud of me."

The next person up hit a line drive to the left infield, which should have been an easy one to catch, but the shortstop missed it. The batter and Bruce got to their next bases safely. The batter after that hit a grounder. Bruce ran home, the guy on first reached second, and the batter wasn't fast enough and got tagged out. Three outs and we switched.

The regular catcher for Bruce's team had just arrived, so Bruce chose to be the left fielder. I was the fifth up to bat. We had one out, two runs, and a girl on third base. My first swing connected perfectly and sent the ball on a perfect pop fly. Only problem was that Bruce caught the ball right after the girl on third stole home and before I could reach first base. "Harkness, you're out!" said Robert. Bruce waved as he threw the ball back to the pitcher.

Oh, it is _on,_ Mr. Wayne.

Soon it was my turn in the field. Bruce hit a groundball, which had most of us scrambling for the ball while he casually jogged to first and two of his teammates ran home. "Trouble?" he grinned. I shook my head and stepped a little closer to the pitcher, knowing this next batter never hit very far. He swung and the ball seemed to fly straight into my glove. For good measure, I tagged Bruce as he was running by just to make sure he knew he was out. On his way back, he gave me the eye that let me know he accepted the challenge.

The next time I was up to bat, Bruce had taken shortstop. I hit the ball into the ground just in front of him. He nearly caught the ball before it hit the dirt, but had to field it instead. By the time he threw it to first, I was already there.

Every time someone came up to bat, Bruce was ready to catch their balls. Except each time he did, he tried to get it to whatever base I was headed to next. As soon as I heard the ball connect with the bat, I was off for the next base before Bruce could try to get me out. Eventually, I ran home, much to his dismay.

Two could play this game. When Bruce came up to bat next, I let him know I was ready for any fly or pop fly he could unleash. He was thrown a curve ball, but he managed to turn it into a nice line drive that was aimed right over my head. I jumped to catch it, but the ball grazed the top of my glove and I had to go scrambling for it. He made it to first, second, and third before I could throw the ball back to the pitcher. Then, just to tick me off, he ran home.

My competitiveness was coming out. On my next turn to bat, I swung hard enough to crack open Batman's head for each pitch, resulting in one strike, one foul, and one beautiful line drive. I made it to first and tried for second, but Bruce was already sending the ball to the second baseman. I knew I was out before I got there.

Bruce's own need to win was revealing itself too. His first swing earned him a pop fly in the direction of second base, the kind that landed easily in my glove. I saw him shake a fist briefly on his way back to the bench.

As it happens, neither Bruce or I got to bat on the next inning. All the batters before us managed to strike out. Probably because the pitcher was pretty bad. I can testify to this because on my next turn, all I got were pitches way out of my range, and I ended up walking to first. This inning was pretty relaxed for me because everyone else hit some low ground balls and I just took it one base at a time.

When we switched sides again, I took a turn pitching just because I needed the practice. Also because I can throw some deceptively slow balls. Two people struck out with my pitching, and a third hit a ground ball. Then Bruce was up to bat. That was when I pulled out my best ones. My first pitch, although being underhand, was surprisingly fast, and Bruce didn't swing fast enough. "Strike one!" said the umpire.

My next one was a little slower. Bruce was expecting it to be just as fast and swung too early. I grinned as I wound up for the pitch that would strike him out, then gave him one that was even faster than the first and had a bit of a spin. This time, Bruce was ready for it and hit squarely into the center field. After the next few batters, he came in and scored a run. He tipped his helmet to me as he landed on home plate.

When my team came in for the next inning, I saw Bruce talking to his team captain. Then I saw him run out to the pitcher's mound. What made me more nervous was the fact that I was first in line to bat. I put on my helmet and ran out to home plate.

I thought I could pitch fast. Bruce practically sent me fireballs. I flinched on the first one, swung too late, and was given a strike. I got ready for the next one, which was a bit of a wild curve ball. I swung at the right time, but not low enough. My jaw clenched in frustration, but I forced myself to relax for the next pitch. Bruce sent me another fireball and I imagined that it was Batman's head flying at me. That did the trick. I sent it way out into the centerfield and raced around the bases.

I took a place in the centerfield the next time our team was out in the field. I got a good distance away from the other fielders, preparing for only one batter. Bruce. He hit a perfect fly ball, just as I knew he would because he was going to one-up my last hit. I didn't run for the ball. I just stuck my glove up in the air and the softball came to me. Out.

Well, we seemed to be having a bit of a contest as to who could bat the ball further. Bruce took my same position as the center fielder. With a runner on second and third, Robert told me the priority was to get them moving. So I made sure I only hit the ball far enough that I would get to first. Bruce looked a little disappointed that I wasn't going to give him anything to do and came in a bit closer for the other batters. I got to second before we got three outs and I went back to the field. The left side this time.

Bruce didn't forget about the contest. When he came up to bat, the bases were loaded. He pointed the bat at me. "This one's for you, Jenny! You're not far enough!" Of course not. I took a few steps backward. The first pitch he got, he sent the ball directly over my head and I had to go off running for it as it rolled away. I grabbed it out of the ground with a handful of grass and threw it back to the pitcher, but by then, Bruce and everyone on the bases had come home and scored a run.

Alright, if that's the way you want it. On my next turn, I hit the softball hard enough that Batman would have been wincing. It sailed well into the outfield where Bruce was waiting. He went running after it, jumped, and came back down with my fly ball in his glove.

"Are you sure you should be out that far?" Robert asked me when I took a position way out in center field. "it's softball. No one can hit the ball that far."

"We'll see." Mr. Wayne had surprised me more than once today.

The pitcher nervously looked between me and Bruce, knowing that this had become a contest between the two of us. Then he shrugged and threw the ball at Bruce. The ball connected with an explosive _CRACK!_ and both of us went running. I darted after the ball, took a flying leap, and landed in the grass on my stomach. I felt like my face was broken, but I had Bruce's ball in my glove. Out!

"Alright, good game!" Robert and Charlie called. Nine innings already? Dang. I got off my face and ran back to the benches where everyone was shaking hands and high-fiving each other. Bruce was getting a lot of the attention. Especially from the young women.

"So who won?" I asked Bruce as I tossed him the ball that he had hit to me.

"I have no idea," he answered honestly. "Good game, Jenny."

We shook hands to make sure our competition stayed on the diamond. "Good game, Bruce." The rest of the team had to congratulate him too, so I had to wait a couple minutes before I made my next offer. "Usually after a game, we go to the ice cream shop in the student union and get ice cream cones. Want to come?"

He took off his helmet and handed it back to me so I could put it away. "That actually sounds like a lot of fun. I'd love to."

* * *

I got Mr. Wayne back home by nine o'clock. There wasn't a whole lot said between the game and driving back to the Palasades. The teams had really taken to him, and that was generally a good sign.

"I had a great time tonight," he said. "Thanks for getting me out of the house."

"Not a problem. You are welcome to join our games whenever you want." I got out of the car and opened up Bruce's door. "Are you feeling better about things, then?"

"I am. Definitely. Maybe violence is for me."

"It's not violence! It's a competitive sport!" I insisted.

"Good night, Jenny," he called as he walked to his door.

"Good night, Mr. Wayne. I'll see you tomorrow."


	23. Chapter Twenty-Two

Tex was hanging from the rafters of an old, mostly empty, hotel when Batman found her. Directly above his head, too. " _Pst!_ " she hissed, waving him away. He shot his grappling cable up into the ceiling and joined her shortly. " _What are you doing here?_ "

"I need a favor." He shifted his position so he was more comfortably seated in the exposed ceiling beams.

" _Can it wait?_ "

"Yes. What's going on?" He took out a pair of binoculars to watch the lobby below.

" _A meeting of a couple local gangs, supposedly. Someone insulted someone, so they'll be taking it out on each other here tonight. I was hoping to prevent that._ "

"How exactly?"

Seven men, or more accurately, boys entered the hotel lobby, exchanging insults and threats and throwing gang symbols around. It seemed to be a fairly even fight; three against four. They were dressed like typical gangsters from the ghetto from the baggy pants to the dirty hoodies. The boys were probably all in high school or close to that age, but acting like they had been on the streets far longer than that.

Tex readied herself to jump down. " _Just like the last time I was in the rafters._ "

"Do you want any help?" He noticed that the kids had started pulling out firearms.

" _Nope. Just stay put._ " Tex let go of the rafters and landed right in the middle of the group on all fours. Instantly, the shouting and fighting stopped.

"It's Tex!" one of them shouted. The boys had one of two reactions: run away before someone got hurt, or just plain shoot her. Three of them opted to shoot her, two ran, and two failed to react at all. Tex waited a second for the kids to stop shooting. When she didn't fall down dead or even fight back, the shooters approached her for a closer look.

That was the opening she needed. She leapt to her feet, grabbed a gun with each hand, and kicked a third guy in the chest that was standing right behind her. " _What are you kids doing with these?_ " she said as she crushed the guns.

"We're not kids," said one Hispanic guy who looked like he was about eighteen. He reached for his belt to grab another gun, but Tex grabbed his wrist and twisted his arm until he was on his knees before letting him go.

" _You're about as tall as me. You're kids._ " She picked up one of the fallen guns and smashed that too. " _You're barely even worth my time._ "

"You think you're better than us?" said a black guy who was at most twenty. "You have no idea what it's like for us!"

" _I do not think I'm better than you. However, I do know how insignificant you are. You see that?_ " She pointed up to the ceiling where Batman was sitting.

"No," said the first boy.

" _What you do not see is Batman._ " He waved for Tex's benefit, but he was fairly well hidden in the shadows. " _He's here for me. He's not bothering with you. You barely show up on his radar. I'm here because it's stupid to see kids as young as you killing each other. There's no reason for it._ "

"What are you going to tell us that everyone else hasn't already said?" said one of the other gangsters sarcastically. "Stay in school?"

" _That's not a bad idea. At the very least, get a job. Now, shoo! Go home._ " With their weapons destroyed and their fighting skills not nearly up to par with Tex, they decided to do as she said. " _No, not the front door,_ " she said to a couple trying to go that way. " _Take the back way._ "

As the others left, Batman joined her on the ground. "What's wrong with the front door?"

" _I'm expecting a drive-by. A lot of these kids have older brothers._ " She peeled the serial numbers off the guns she had just crushed to look up later.

"How did you find out about this scuffle?"

" _Facebook. It's a Private Investigator's dream come true. I programmed a bot to watch facebook for trouble, but I mostly get a lot of empty threats. Every once in a while, something like this turns up._ "

"You should probably stick to the police scanners. No one was going to get hurt here tonight anyway."

" _I dunno. Scared kids with guns? These were all loaded properly, safeties off. They probably weren't planning on killing anyone, but it could have happened anyway. So what did you need me for?_ "

"Can you come with me to the city morgue?"

There was a squeal of tires just outside, followed by gunshots from a sub-machine gun. Tex calmly slipped the serial numbers into her jacket, and Batman pulled a few batarangs and spike grenades from his belt.

" _Sure. Why not._ "

Batman kicked open the front door to a shower of bullets from a Honda driving by. While he briefly took cover, Tex ran out and raced directly for the car, drawing their fire. The little green Honda with three proper gangsters with heavy firepower made a U-turn just down the street and came back for Tex. On its way back to the hotel, Batman came out and threw the spike grenades at the car.

The driver swerved to avoid the blast, but the spikes shredded the tires and the car had no choice but to stop. The three men in the car stepped out, firing at Tex as they did so, but she did not fall. Batman let his batarangs fly one after the other. He hit the driver's right hand, knocking the gun out of his hand, got the shotgun passenger in the cheek, and the back-seat one in the arm. Then Tex caught up with them and knocked them out with a few solid punches and a round-house kick.

Batman provided the handcuffs, but let Tex take care of securing the gunmen. It was her bust after all. After destroying and collecting the serial numbers of the guns, she turned to Batman and said, " _Well, let's go!_ " as chipper as a scrambled voice could sound.

* * *

" _Why are we breaking into a morgue?_ " Tex complained as Batman helped her slip through the window and step down from the sink.

"There's a body I want you to look at." He turned on an overhead light and started looking at the labels on the metal drawers where the bodies were stored.

" _Morgues give me the creeps._ "

"Because of the bodies?"

" _Well, after waking up in one, suddenly the fear of being not quite dead before they gut you doesn't seem so far fetched._ " She edged away from the gurneys.

He found the door he wanted, lifted the latch, and rolled out the body which was covered by a white sheet. "This is Melissa Jones. Some kids found her body near the playground in a park on Sixth Avenue. She was eighteen years old, just barely starting school at Gotham City College. She was originally from Nebraska." He glanced at Tex to make sure she was still listening. "They haven't done an autopsy on her yet, but based on her profile, I think I know who did this to her."

" _You think she was murdered?_ "

"I do."

" _Jenny says that it's best to not to form theories before you have the evidence. It distorts what you find._ "

"An admirable motto." He pulled the sheet off her face, revealing a girl with long blonde curls, black eyes like a raccoon, pale, ashen skin, and a faint look of fear etched on her face. "Examine her skull."

Tex touched the corner of her right eye and bent closer to the body, making a semi-circle sweep around her head. " _What are you looking for exactly?_ "

"Something in her eyes."

She straightened back up. " _There's definitely something there, but it's not her eyes. It's the sockets. They've both got holes in them. I just don't understand how they were made. The skin's not broken and the angle is weird._ " She lifted up one of the girl's eyelids and looked under it. " _Oh._ "

"What does that mean?"

" _I'm not a medical professional, but I think there's damage to her brain as well, like a spike was drilled through her eye. Have you ever seen_ Sucker Punch?"

"I don't watch movies."

" _You wouldn't, would you._ "

" **Tex.** " She liked to run his patience thin for some reason.

" _She's been lobotomized. Someone took a thin spike like an ice pick, put it between her eyelid and eyeball, hammered it through the thin bone of her eye socket, wiggled it around a bit, and took it out to do the same to the other side._ "

"Lobotomies aren't fatal, though."

" _Not if they're done correctly. Someone who doesn't know what they're doing can cause a brain hemorrhage._ "

"Can you tell if whoever did this was trying to kill her or if it was an accident?"

" _I cannot. Everything I know about lobotomies comes from_ Sucker Punch, _which is apparently where our killer got his info._ " She yanked the sheet back over the girl's face and shoved her body back into the locker. " _It's not fair, you know. Even if she wasn't killed by this hack, she could have lost her mind, her personality. What kind of person is he if he thinks he has the right to play with someone else's brain?_ "

Batman closed the latch on the door. "That's all I needed to know."

Tex took a step back and studied him as he moved back to the windows. " _Okay, spill. Out of all the dead people in Gotham, why is she interesting?_ "

"She was lobotomized. Isn't that enough?"

" _You knew that before you brought me in. How?_ "

"The black eyes."

" _Lots of dead people have black eyes. Please stop lying to me._ "

"As soon as I talk to Gordon."

* * *

For once, Batman's call hadn't been urgent. Gordon was surprised to find both Batman and Tex waiting in full view of the door. "I take it you have something interesting or else you wouldn't keep me away from Barbara's delicious meatloaf." That last part was laced with sarcasm.

" _What's wrong with meatloaf?_ " Tex mumbled.

"Gotham has a serial killer," Batman announced.

"You'll have to be a little more specific."

He produced a thick file from under his cape and handed it to Commissioner Gordon. Tex looked over his shoulder to read it too. It was a collection of photographs and details on three girls who had been killed in Gotham in the last six months. They were all teens, had blonde hair, and were found wearing blue dresses, white aprons, and black ribbons to hold back their hair. The latest one was Melissa Jones. All of them had black eyes. The first two had Starvation listed as their cause of death. Melissa's case was pending.

" _They were all lobotomized?_ "

"The report says they were also likely given Electroshock Therapy. We've got an amateur psychosurgeon on our hands," Gordon declared.

"It's not just them. Five years ago, the FBI was investigating a string of killings remarkably similar to these girls. Eight girls were killed, as well as three men over the course of three years and four states – Maine, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. Then they just stopped and the case went cold."

" _This sounds really familiar,_ " Tex commented.

"Did they have any suspects?"

He shook his head. "Several, but there were no prints, no useable DNA, and no identifiable relations between the victims. They think the killer was looking for girls that looked like Alice." Batman handed Tex a copy of _Alice in Wonderland_. "Not only were all of them lobotomized, but they also had a copy of this left at their house. I found this at Melissa Jones' apartment. The unofficial name for him is The Mad Hatter."

" _They're not supposed to name the serial killers_ ," Tex grumbled.

"I can see how the girls look like Alice, but why were the men killed?" Gordon said.

"Supposedly they got in the way, but some agents believed that they portrayed the Dormouse and the March Hare. The men were found dressed in Victorian suits and the medical examiners found tea in their stomachs."

"Is there reason to believe he's going to strike again?"

"Yes, and soon. He doesn't usually dump a body without having another girl in mind to kidnap."

"Then we'll have to bring in the FBI and soon. Do you remember which agent led the original case?"

"Not at the moment. Tex and I will be on the lookout for any girls that could be potential targets."

"And we'll start narrowing down medical professionals that moved here in the last two years. The Rachel Dawes Memorial Hospital doesn't help matters much there. The Wayne Foundation pulled in the best and brightest from around the country to get that place running. I'll take that," he said to Tex. She handed him the book, which he took with a latex glove. Then he looked back up to Batman only to find the man had disappeared. "How does he do that?"

" _Bugger if I know. Be nice if he could warn me._ " She pulled a cable out of her pocket and attached one end to the edge of the roof and jumped off.

"I know the feeling."

* * *

The dump site was still cordoned off by yellow police tape, but Batman ignored it and ducked under it. Tex was following him up until that point, but did not want to put her footprints in the scene. " _There's nothing here,_ " she snapped. " _The Hatter dumped her body here, that's it._ "

"The police might have missed something." He crouched down next to the ground that the body used to occupy and scanned the vegetation.

" _Right, because they're all incompetent and you're the only one that can solve this._ "

He could see the rage radiating off her body without needing to look at her. "Is there something you'd like to say?"

" _The Mad Hatter case goes cold in Connecticut two years ago, and you somehow connect it to a murder in Gotham City._ "

"The cause of death was unique." It was wet on the night Melissa's body was dumped, but dry when the kids found it. There were a few lumps left in the ground from the killer's shoes.

" _Then why didn't the two other girl's lobotomies clue you in?_ "

"I didn't happen to investigate them." He started combing through the grass in one possible footprint.

" _Does the fact that they died before I showed up and you started digging into my personal life have anything to do with it?_ "

"I had the Penguin case at the time. I was busy." There was some soil in this footprint that didn't quite match the color of the dirt in the rest of the park. It could have been sand from the playground, or it could have been from the killer. In either case ...

" _So it's just a coincidence that my **dad** was the lead agent on the Mad Hatter case. That was why it sounded so familiar._ " Everything about her tone of voice and body language said she didn't believe that at all.

Batman gathered a sample of strange dirt into a glass tube and put it in a compartment of his utility belt. "I thought your father was on Missing Persons, not Homicide."

" _He is. The Mad Hatter case started out with a missing person. Did you go through my dad's cold cases?_ "

"I went through all his cases. I thought you were using him as a source." He stood up and left the crime scene, passing by Tex.

" _Do you understand that if his bosses find out that you've gone through his reports, that it will make him look like he's a leak? We could get him into some serious trouble._ "

"Only if he didn't take the proper precautions. Which he did. It's the FBI that should be worried about their security. Especially their firewalls."

" _They're not going to take kindly to that._ "

"With something like the Mad Hatter case to look forward to, I don't think they'll mind."


	24. Chapter Twenty-Three

A delivery boy set down a vase with roses that took up nearly half my desk. I looked out through the right side. "Who is this for?"

"Jenny Harkness. Sign here please." I signed the slip of paper that said I received it, gave him five dollars, and sent him on his way before searching for the card that would tell me who they were from.

"Jenny?" Mr. Wayne had to stand on tip toe to see over the top of the bouquet. "Is that you in there?"

"Just give me a minute so I can figure out who I need to kill." I found the card with James Carroll's signature on it. "I'm starting to hate this man."

"Because he gave you flowers?"

"Does this look like a reasonably sized bouquet? It's in my way,and it's gaudy." I glared at it, imagining it in a pyre.

Mr. Wayne nodded thoughtfully, then took the card and read the note. " 'Darling Jenny, Your blue eyes are the only thing holding my soul together.' " I dived over my desk to snatch the card away from him, but he danced away from me and just kept reading it. " 'They are the color of the deep blue ocean,' – not much of a wordsmith is he, this Mr. Carroll."

"Give me that!" I hissed as I chased him into his office.

"I would have chosen the color of a storm, personally. 'Your radiant smile fills my world with light.' You smile?"

"You're hilarious, and this is childish." Even more so now that he was holding it well above my reach.

" 'I am desperate to see you again. Please return my phone calls.' "

"It does not say that."

"Yes it does. Right here, see?" He pointed it out and I grabbed it back, tore it up, and threw it away. "What did this poor man do to earn the wrath of Jenny Harkness?"

"You haven't seen me angry yet, Mr. Wayne. This is annoyed." I stalked back to my desk, still not sure how to handle this awkward pile of flowers in the middle of my workspace.

"I think I liked it better when you called me Bruce." He followed me back to my desk.

"I'll call you Bruce when you're not my boss." The phone was ringing, so I found it under some rose leaves and put on my cheerful voice. "Mr. Wayne's office, this is Jenny. How can I help you?"

"The flowers … the flowers … they're everywhere!" Jackie wailed.

"You're not supposed to use this number unless it's an emergency."

"You weren't answering your phone! And this whole place smells like pollen!"

"That's because I'm at work. I turned my phone off. How bad is it?"

"I am literally sleeping in shrubberies. I have no more room to put these. Who is sending them? Ah! Die, azaleas, die!" I imagine the sounds I heard in the background were those of Jackie using a kitchen knife to stab some defenseless flowers.

"James Carroll. I may have led him on a little bit."

"A little? There is no room to walk in here. Do you understand that? I've got about twenty bouquets in the bathroom, six under my bed, four under yours, three in each of the sinks – NO! NO MORE DELIVERIES! I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE!" Jackie was getting so loud that Mr. Wayne was scooting in closer to eavesdrop, and I was letting him.

"Is someone at the door?"

"No," she whispered with desperation. "No one's at the door, because if there's someone there, then I have to answer – " _Beep!_

"Ooh, Jackie, someone's on the other line." I transferred over. "Mr. Wayne's office, this is Jenny. How can I help you?" For the next three minutes, I set up a meeting with a Mrs. Han of Rio-tech Incorporated and our board of directors for next week. Then I went back to Jackie.

" _Why are they here, Jenny?_ " she sobbed. "I don't want to sneeze anymore. Take them away! Do whatever he says!"

"I'll talk to him. Good luck with … stuff." I hung up and dialed maintenance. "I need someone to bring the biggest garbage can they've got up to my desk. I've got a large bouquet of roses I would like to get rid of. Thank you."

"I didn't realize that you hated flowers so much," Mr. Wayne commented as he pulled some of the Baby Breath out of the bouquet and put a bit in his lapel.

"I don't hate flowers," I replied as I started trying to clear a path to my desk. "I just kind of thought I had gotten rid of this man."

"What you're doing is playing hard to get. I know you're not trying, but trust me. You've been ignoring him, and now he's intrigued. He's asking you out in a way that you can't ignore."

"But I don't date. People don't like me. Now the one person I want to avoid won't leave me alone."

"So give him one night and tell him it's not going to work out. You get a free dinner, he gets his heart ripped out, it's a win-win." His smile suggested that it wasn't Mr. Carroll he was thinking would win in this situation. "I kind of feel bad for your sister, though. It sounds like she's developed a phobia of roses."

I rolled my eyes. "I'm sure she's exaggerating."

* * *

She wasn't.

I opened the door a crack, took one whiff, and closed it. There was enough pollen in there to give even the most resilient person hay fever. I had to throw my weight against the door in order to open it. Jackie had finally just blockaded the door with flowers to keep the delivery boys out and just went through the window to go to work. This was ridiculous, and there was no reason for it. I waded through some roses to get to the table where a pile of cards waited. James Carroll. James Carroll. James Carroll.

I whipped out my phone and dialed this man. "James, we need to talk."

"Did you get my flowers?"

"Yes, James. Yes I did."

"Wonderful! I hoped you like roses. I was wondering if you were busy tonight. No one else has asked you out, right?"

"Well, no, but –"

"Perfect! I'll pick you up at seven. Wear something nice." Then he hung up.

Something nice translated into a dark blue skirt and blazer, white blouse, a silver necklace, and black pumps; i.e. exactly what I wore to work. James Carroll knocked on my door one minute before seven wearing a suit and holding a bouquet of white roses. "Jenny, you look beautiful. I brought these for you." He held out the roses.

"Last one, okay?" I said as I grabbed the bouquet and tossed it onto a pile somewhere in the kitchen. "This is too much."

"I'm sorry. I should have realized you don't like flowers. Let me make it up to you."

"No."

"I have reservations at the Criterion. I think you'll like the place. Come on."

And that is how Mr. Carroll got me into his Camaro and took me to the Criterion restaurant. As the valet took the car away and James escorted me inside, I suddenly felt under-dressed. Women were coming inside draped in gold, jewels, and expensive fabrics cut and sewn by the most 'in' designers. I thought I was just eating food, but the Criterion is where the rich and fabulous show everyone else how rich and fabulous they are. It was nothing more than another Wayne party, but without Mr. Wayne and the fake smiles. Several ladies, and their men, looked down at us as the commoners trying to be a part of their world.

One of the waitresses approached us. She wore the standard white button-up shirt and black slacks, but changed it up with a pink rose in her red hair that was twisted into a braid that fell over her left shoulder. "Good evening, Mr. Carroll. I have your table ready over here." She led us to a table well in the center of the restaurant, gave us our menus, and left to get our wine.

"Nice place," I said as I put the napkin on my lap.

"It's the best in Gotham. So how have things been going for you?"

"It goes. Sometimes it goes in circles, but it goes. You?"

"Just the usual at work. A lot of screaming children today. I don't know what it is about being knocked out that's so scary," he laughed ironically.

"The thought of not waking up." Our waitress returned and poured our wine.

"Oh. Maybe it's best not to talk about my work. I know that doctors and nurses have a high tolerance for gross things. Nothing phases me anymore. Not even –"

This is the point where my face went bright red. No one else around could hear his story about a particularly bad knifing that he had to take care of a few days ago, but I certainly could. And he did not spare me on the details. He almost enjoyed the entire thing, like he found it so much fun to help sew a human back together. Oh, a headache was coming on.

But then again, two could play this game. "How … fascinating. Do you know what I did the other day? I was working on a chemical that can identify human blood that's doesn't destroy the sample, but I'm kind of failing miserably." What followed was basically a list of chemical formulas I used that didn't work, what happened, and why. Dry, boring, and time filling. Unfortunately, this backfired because he studied chemistry at one point too, and he became enthralled.

"I can't believe how brilliant you are," he said in awe.

"You haven't seen bright yet."

"How do you mean?"

"What I mean is that I know you're a liar, Mr. Carroll. You told me you're from Colorado, studied medicine at the University of Utah, and only moved to the east a year and a half ago. Your accent is nothing like the midwest. In fact, I'd have to say you were born and raised in Connecticut. You've never been west of Ohio."

"I think it's time to order." he waved over our waitress. She smiled and came over immediately. "What would you like, Jenny?"

I hadn't even glanced at the menu yet. "If I may," said the waitress, "the chef recommends the Gazpacho Soup."

"I think we'll both have that," said James, effectively sending her away. I couldn't care less about what I was eating at this point.

"I heard that you and Bruce Wayne like to play baseball," he started.

"Softball, and don't change the subject. You make far too much for an anesthesiologist. I think you come from money, probably a good sized trust fund provided by your parents to live off of. You work at Dawes Memorial, which hires only the best and brightest from around the country. You went to Yale, judging from the lapel pin you are loath to abandon, but are trying to hide, and also from the corner of an envelope you quickly stuffed in your glove compartment right before coming to pick me up. Why do I think you went in-state? Because you hate travel. Even though you're trying to hide your past, you didn't pick up and run across the country. You prefer to stay close to home. What I don't understand is why you would give up your status as an Ivy League graduate and tell everyone you went to school in Utah."

He slammed down his wine glass impatiently. "I got tired of the rich kids crowd, alright?"

"No you didn't. When I met you, you were schmoozing with Mr. Wayne's friends after trying to lie low got boring, even though your version of lying low was a mansion in the Gotham Palasades. You missed the attention."

"Look, Jenny, there are a lot of things in my past that I'd rather not bring up."

"Well too bad. You chose to be obsessed with me. I'm the kind of person that digs. The more you interact with me, the more I will lay you bare."

"Do you interrogate every man you date?"

"I don't date. I interrogate and investigate everyone I come in contact with, regardless of the potential for romance. If you have something to hide, run away now." This was the biggest hint I could drop for him. Leave me alone. I am giving you an out.

James took a swallow of wine. "The truth is that someone back home wants me dead. I'm trying to lie low in Gotham. So far, he hasn't come after me, so it's working. You're right, though. I'm not doing a good job of it," he laughed. "But if I hadn't gone to Bruce Wayne's party ..." He reached across the table and held my hand. "I never would have met you." He looked deep into my eyes.

I leaned forward. "James."

"Yes?"

"You have a tell."

"What?"

"A tell. It's a nervous tic you have when you're telling me stories. Your eyes kind of tighten."

"I'm sorry?"

"You're lying to me again."

The waitress conveniently reappeared with our plates and the cart with the soup in a bowl. She set up our plates and bowls while the two of us traded some loaded glances. "Sure feels chilly here all of a sudden," she remarked as she ladled James' soup into his bowl. "I'll see if the manager can turn up the heat a bit." Then she moved to pour soup into my bowl, but her elbow bumped my chair and she dumped half the ladle into my lap. I gasped and stood up out of shock, but the waitress was far more traumatized than I was. "I … I'm so sorry!" she said.

I wiped some of it off with my napkin, then just threw it on the table in frustration. "I don't think this is going to work out. Goodbye James." Then I stalked out of the restaurant, hailed a cab, and went home. I can only assume that James stayed to finish his soup.

* * *

I planned on just going home long enough to change my clothes and then head out to the Motel 6 near the police station, but my plans suddenly changed when I noticed that the dumpster was full of flowers. I went up to my apartment and opened the door without having to unlock it.

A man in his fifties with thinning and lightening red hair, wearing a dark gray business suit, a pair of square-frame glasses, and non-slip black shoes was sitting at my kitchen table with his computer out in the only spot that didn't have any wildlife. He acted like he hadn't noticed me come in, but he definitely had. "Your locks are ridiculously easy to pick, Jenny," he said in his way of saying Hello.

"Only for someone like you. Hi Dad." I gave him a hug around his shoulders while also taking a look at what he was working on. The report was for some blonde girl from Massachusetts, but Dad minimized the window before I could read any more. "That's a homicide, not a missing person."

"She used to be missing. Still my case." He stood up to give me a proper hug. "I figured that since I was in Gotham that I ought to visit you. I saw that you decided to open up your own flower shop."

"Remember James? That guy who picked me up? I got rid of him."

He nodded once. "Good. I didn't like him."

"Which is why you decided to throw away some of my roses."

"I needed room to breathe. When does Jackie get home?"

"Her shift ends in a couple hours, but then she goes out and … hangs out with some friends." Dad and I hadn't been too clear with each other on what we knew about Jackie. I don't think he thought Jackie would be staying with me as long as she had been. "Do you want some coffee?"

"I would love some. How are you doing with school? I can't believe you're this close to graduation."

Dad and I spent the next half hour just catching up on things. Then we spent the next little while taking trips to the dumpster with our arms full of flowers. Eventually, my little apartment had one bouquet of daisies in the center of the kitchen table, and that was it in regards to flowers. We may or may not have gone down the street to use the neighboring apartment complex's dumpsters too. After that, we started playing a game of chess.

It was pretty late when Jackie finally came home from work. As soon as she saw us at the table she squealed, "Daddy!" in joy, and tackled him with a hug. "I'm so happy you're here!"

"It's been too long since I've seen you, young lady. You could have come home every few months or so."

I managed to catch a glimpse of Jackie's face and was surprised to see a nice bright shiner developing on her left eye. "Jackie, what happened to your face?"

She suddenly realized that she was sporting a very obvious injury. "Oh. I met your boyfriend after work."

"He wasn't ever my boyfriend!" I protested.

"James Carroll did this to you?" Dad said through his teeth. His eyes were narrowing as he thought of ways to kill him. And where to hide the body.

"He surprised me," she said dismissively. "You should see his face, though. I'm pretty sure I broke his jaw." I sat her down at the table while Dad went to the freezer to get some ice. "Definitely his wrist. Maybe some ribs. And I think I want to double my rate for sustaining an injury." She held out a hand to me.

Dad wrapped the ice in a towel and put it on her face. "What is this all about?"

I got $200 out of my purse and handed it over to her. It was money well spent. Jackie got into her story-telling stance: legs folded, body leaning towards the recipient, hands out and animated. "As soon as she came into my restaurant, she started signing, _Help me!_ Then while she's talking to Mr. I-have-a-stupid-haircut, she's signing under the table, telling me she'll give me a $20 to help her out. As if I'm that cheap. It's kind of cool to see her talking and signing at the same time, actually. She finally settles on $100, and I tell her to get the Gazpacho soup."

"Why Gazpacho?" Dad asked.

"Because it's served cold," I explained. "She spilled it on my lap and I made my escape."

Dad wasn't nearly as amused by the story as Jackie was. It was more concerning to him. "This man has a surprising temper. I don't want you going anywhere near him, Jenny. I've seen men like him before."

"He won't come back. I'm sure of it."


	25. Chapter Twenty-Four

Batman tapped on Jenny's window. Normally he would just 'appear' inside, but with Jackie, Jenny, and their father already inside, he wasn't about to risk getting another concussion. Jenny opened the window herself. "Are you looking for Tex?" she asked.

"And Agent Harkness." Jenny waved a hand to grant him permission to come in, he climbed inside and approached them. Jackie looked up at him with one eye, the other being covered by ice and a towel. "What happened to you?"

"I had a customer that wasn't happy with the service I gave." She had a grin as she explained that, as if she didn't regret it for a second.

"Did you need something, Batman?" Agent Harkness demanded. He shared the same disdain for the vigilante as his oldest daughter, and made no secret of it.

"I have some information on the Mad Hatter case. I thought you might be interested in it."

Jenny immediately turned on her heel. "I hear my homework calling."

"You would probably be of some help," her father said, trying to keep her from leaving. He knew her talents well.

"I'm not getting involved with a serial killer. I just got rid of one psychopath for today, so that fulfills my quota for the month. Also, it's late. Good night all, and don't you keep Jackie up too late." That last part was directed at the newest visitor, and by far the most unwelcome. She waved and vanished down the hall into her room.

As soon as she was gone, Agent Harkness got the first word in. "Let me be explicitly clear … Batman. I do not work with murderers. I put them away. I don't know what sort of game you've got going on with the GCPD, but I'm not interested in being a part of it. I will give you one chance to leave." He loosened the gun in a shoulder holster under his jacket, but didn't pull it out. "I suggest you take it."

"Dad!" Jackie exclaimed. "He's the one who alerted the police about the Mad Hatter. If it hadn't been for him, you wouldn't be here yet. He can help us!"

"That's another thing." He turned to his daughter who was still at the table. "You are not on this case. You are not a private detective or some sort of secret agent, and I wish you would stop pretending to be." His cell phone rang and he excused himself to go answer it.

Jackie face fell visibly, and the temperature in the room chilled. Then she set the ice on the table, stood to face Batman and took a steadying breath. "What did you find?"

He considered prying into this bit of family drama, but decided that enough had been handed to him already. "The soil sample I took from the last victim's dump site comes from near the quarry. He might be hiding somewhere between the Quarry and the Palasades."

She nodded. "Okay. It'll take me about five minutes to suit up, but if you want to get going, I'll catch up in a bit." He nodded in agreement.

"I'm sorry," her father said as he reappeared, "I have to go. Another girl's been kidnapped." Jackie and Batman exchanged a look, knowing immediately what they had to do. She turned to her room and he to the window. "Wait, Jackie, you're not coming!" Agent Harkness was cut off by her slamming the door in his face. "This is your fault!" he snapped at Batman. "You shouldn't have –" But the Batman was already gone.

* * *

"Her name is Audrey Garrison. Twenty years old, blonde, 5'3", 120 pounds. Last seen leaving the Del Sol Club at 10:40 p.m. Witnesses say she was forced into a tan Mazda Civic which got away from the scene, heading west. We were given a partial plate and we're running it down now. Suspect was described as 5'10", 200 pounds, and wearing a dark hat and long coat."

"Has the Amber Alert gone out?" Batman asked.

"Yes, but the news media aren't mentioning anything about the Mad Hatter. We don't want to spook him yet. Audrey's picture is everywhere. We need to find her fast. None of the girls lasted more than a week before they were abandoned to starve to death."

"Thank you, Gordon. We'll do what we can." He hung up on the Commissioner. "Did you get that Tex?"

" _Sure did. The Del Sol's downtown, isn't it?_ "

"It is, but we're trying to get ahead of him. Patrol the Palasades. If you can, ask the neighbors if they've seen anything."

" _Got it._ "

Tex broke off from the road, taking a right towards the high end of Gotham while Batman in the Tumbler II continued towards the quarry that was about a mile away from the mansions. The Tumbler was better equipped to handle the rocky terrain.

The problem with the quarry was two-fold. One, the rocks and gravel were shipped out daily all over Gotham and the rest of the east coast. The dirt he found at the dump site could have come from any number of construction sites that used the quarry's gravel. But the reason he was here was for the second problem; out here, there were nearly one hundred possible caves and hideouts far away from the city where no one could hear the girls scream.

The Mad Hatter was new to Gotham, so he wouldn't have had the time or experience to find the better hidden caves. Batman started with Newman Cave: not the one most of the tourists knew about, but still easy to find by the dedicated or intrepid hiker. The scanning equipment in the Tumbler II wasn't picking up any heat signatures, but if the Mad Hatter had been here, he would know. He got out of the Tumbler II, took a flashlight off his belt, and took a look around the cave. A smile briefly crossed his face when he thought of how proud Fox would be knowing that he was using his spelunking equipment for spelunking.

Just after the first bend past the mouth of the cave, he found two areas cleared of rocks and covered with pine needles – just the right size for a sleeping bag. Between those was a circle of blackened rocks. The ashes in the middle of them were less than a week old. If the Mad hatter killed Melissa here, whoever camped here would have known and wouldn't have cleaned up. This wasn't the Mad Hatter's base of operations. Probably just a couple transients staying for a few days.

A little deeper into the cave, he only found a few bats and a lizard, so he moved on.

Grayskull Cave, a name bestowed upon it by its He-Man fan discoverers, was next. This one had a bit of a vertical entrance, so Batman lowered himself in with a grappling cable. Inside, it was dripping wet with stalactites and stalagmites everywhere. But it did seem habitable and a difficult place to escape from without the proper equipment. He landed on the cave floor and swept the room with the flashlight. The ground was too rocky for anyone to reasonably reside here for some time. However, he did come across a piece of paper stuck behind a stalagmite deeper in the cave.

As he got closer, climbing over boulders and such on the way, he realized that someone actually had been living down here for some time. He retrieved the paper only to find a ziploc bag with another stack of papers pinned under a rock. This was all near a rock floor that had been scratched smoother to get rid of the worst lumps. A lantern was hung on a taller rock with no oil left inside.

The paper turned out to be an envelope addressed to a Jacqueline Harkness in Serbia from Jenny Harkness in Gotham City. The letter inside had fared far better than the envelope that contained it. This cave was the hideout of Jackie. Or it used to be.

But as curious as he was, Batman could hear the time ticking by fast and there was still no hint of the Mad Hatter's hideout. He took both the letter and the bag of papers and got out of the cave.

The next stop was little more than a granite overhang with a small opening that led to a larger room below. He couldn't fit with his armor on, and when he had explored it before as a teenager, it had still been a tight, but manageable squeeze. It would be an unexpected place for a serial killer to use. He peeked inside with his flashlight, but the way was blocked by fallen rocks. Most likely the cave had collapsed years ago.

Wyvern Hole was close by, so he stopped in to visit. After a short walk inside, the floor suddenly dropped into a chasm. The walls showed signs of use by rock climbers: chalk hand prints, carabiners attached to the wall, a rope left behind still tied around a boulder. It would be a great place for the mad hatter, but there was too much traffic from rock climbers to be ideal. He wasn't using this cave.

As Batman left the cave, Tex's voice came over the radio. "Batman, I found her! He dumped Audrey at Wayne Manor!"

"I'll be right there," he replied, running to the Tumbler II. At least she was having some luck. "Call the police."

"No. I need you to follow a car. It's a tan Mazda, license plate SJI 847, heading west, back to downtown."

"Why can't you go after it?" Batman fired up the engine to chase him anyway.

"Because Audrey's still alive, but just barely."

That bit of information nearly floored him. The Mad Hatter made a mistake leaving his victim alive. "Understood." Tex cut off the connection to call 911, and he raced the Tumbler II towards the Palasades, all the while trying to figure out how Bruce Wayne was going to handle this. It only took him a few minutes to get on the road leading to Wayne Manor. As he was heading east,a small car passed him on the right going west. He immediately turned around to catch up.

The little Mazda wasn't much of a challenge, except according to the police scanner, they were on their way on the same road. Batman fired some road spikes over the car head of him, shredding the man's tires. He swerved to avoid the spikes and the car skidding to a stop. Before the Mazda had completely come to a halt, the driver tumbled out of the car and started running towards the hillside in a desperate bid for escape.

Batman parked the Tumbler II, opened the hatch, and fired his grappling cable at the man. He tripped as the cable wrapped around his legs, and Batman reeled him back in. The man was kicking and screaming as he was dragged through the grass and dirt. He picked the man up by his brown, filthy coat and slammed him against the car. "Going somewhere?" he snarled.

"Look man, the guy gave me three grand to drive his car downtown," the middle aged man with scraggly hair sniveled.

Batman punched him in the spleen. "You kidnapped a girl! Where did you take the others?"

"I don't know what you're talking about!" he protested.

Sirens started howling in the distance and the police lights were just becoming visible over the horizon. Batman had to get out before the police came, so his interrogation was cut short. With a growl, Batman handcuffed the man to the Mazda's steering wheel and he climbed back into the Tumbler II.

Instead of going straight to Tex, he took a bit of a detour back home. More specifically, he drove well off the road, through a waterfall, just around an underground lake, and into the Batcave under Wayne Manor. His arrival upset the coven of bats that lived there with him, and they began flying around in a swirling black mass. Batman tore off his armor under the cover of the bats, put on something resembling pajamas, wiped off the black makeup around his eyes, and raced upstairs via the elevator. AS soon as he emerged from the bookcase, Alfred was right there with a robe in hand.

"You're back early," the butler remarked.

"I need you to find the first aid kit," Bruce said as he threw on the robe. "Has Tex stopped by?"

"No. Why would she?"

He tied the belt around the robe haphazardly and put on some slippers. "Because that missing girl is on our front lawn." Bruce opened the door and started walking down the sidewalk around his front yard. On the end of the field, next to the road, Tex was crouched over someone and her bike laid next to her. Her hands were covered in blood, which was nothing compared to the body at her feet. "What's going on?"

Tex's head snapped up. " _Are you Bruce Wayne?_ "

"Yeah."

" _Can you get me a first aid kit or some bandages? She's bleeding bad._ "

"Sure. Do I need to call the police?"

" _I already did. Please hurry._ "

Bruce ran back to the mansion, a feat complicated by his slippers and the recently rained on grass, and met Alfred at the door. "How is she?" Alfred asked.

"Not good. She could use your help." Bruce ditched his slippers at the door and raced back down to Tex and Audrey, while Alfred followed. As soon as he reached her, Tex opened up the little white box and took out the gauze. Most of it was piled on the girl's head and right eye.

" _Apply pressure here,_ " she directed. " _Not too much. Her skull is cracked._ " Bruce did as she said and Tex got to work on the girl's neck and arms.

Bruce almost didn't recognize the girl from the pictures shown on the news. Her face was swollen with bruises. The eye that was visible looked like the socket might be fractured, her cheekbones were definitely broken, and there was a good chance her jaw would need some work. Her hair was sticky with blood from a cut on the top of her crown. There were slashes across the girl's neck and down her chest like her attacker swung a knife at her. Alfred arrived with extra bandages from a torn pillowcase to help stop the bleeding there.

Five minutes and an eternity later, the paramedics and the police arrived, one of the cars parking on the lawn. They picked up where Tex had left off and eventually took over for each of them. Tex stepped back, wringing her hands and looking over the paramedics' shoulders to make sure Audrey was getting the help she needed.

"What happened to her, do you know?" Bruce asked the vigilante.

" _Kind of. Excuse me._ " Tex left Bruce and Alfred so she could give a quick statement to the police.

Soon afterward, the police came to talk to them too. They just needed to know where they were to eliminate them as suspects, and just some details as witnesses. According to Bruce, he saw something from his bedroom window after hearing a car drive by and a motorcycle stall on his lawn. The police had better things to focus on besides Mr. Wayne and his butler, so they let them go fairly quick.

Eventually, the police were finished with Tex and most of them left with the ambulance. A few stayed behind to pick up any trace evidence. She was left behind with Bruce and Alfred, wringing her hands of the blood. Alfred went over to her and touched her shoulder. "Come in and get yourself cleaned up," he said to her.

She looked between him and the police. " _I think I should go._ "

"Nonsense. Come on dear." With a hand on her back, Alfred urged her into the manor.

Bruce went up to his personal bathroom to clean the blood off his hands. Alfred and Tex used the sink in the kitchen. Bruce had relatively little blood to clean off. However, he still had some black makeup under his eyes, giving him the effect of bags under his eyes. He quickly washed that off before heading back downstairs.

Tex was still scrubbing blood out from the corners of her fingernails and the crease between her wrists and her hands with a bristle brush. Alfred was wetting a towel to wipe some blood off her helmet. She must have touched her temple with bloody hands. "Well that was eventful," Bruce said to break the ice.

" _Indeed._ " Her scrubbing got more furious until she just threw the scrub brush back into the sink. " _My hands are shaking, and they don't shake._ "

"So what happened?"

Tex dried her hands off on a towel. " _Audrey Garrison was kidnapped by a serial killer known as the Mad Hatter. And he nearly killed her._ "

"A serial killer?" he said incredulously.

" _And a nasty one at that._ _I hate dealing with serial killers. Slimy, conniving, arrogant ..._ " She growled and pushed herself away from the counter. " _I need to go. Thank you, Alfred, for the … soap. And thanks for your help, both of you._ " With a shake of their hands, she left the mansion and drove back to town.

As soon as she was out the door, Bruce raced back down to the Batcave to don his armor again.

* * *

Batman came to Agent Harkness' motel room over an hour later. Tex was already there with her helmet off. She sat on the foot of her father's bed just staring into space while he paced the room on his phone, giving orders to someone on the other end. He was about to pick the lock on the window when Jackie spotted him and let him inside, much to her father's consternation. He glared at the Dark Knight, but didn't voice his opinion. "Audrey Garrison is alive, but she's not out of the woods yet. She's in the ICU right now."

"She's going to lose her eye." Jackie returned to her seat on the bed and pulled her knees up to her chin. "She didn't deserve that."

"Did she see who kidnapped her?" Batman asked.

"Probably, but unless you have a way to get a statement from a coma patient, you're out of luck."

"Daddy, don't be mean," Jackie scolded half-heartedly. "The Mad Hatter didn't get a chance to lobotomize her. He tried, but he missed. Then he heard me coming and got rid of her. Tried to slit her throat, but her trachea stopped that.

"This was very unlike him," Agent Harkness mused. "He's usually cold and calculating, but tonight, this was an attack of rage. Something set him off."

"What about the driver?"

"Homeless," sighed Jackie as she laid down on the bed.

"He has vagrancy and public intoxication charges going back at least twelve years in Gotham," her father further explained. "He's not our man, says he didn't see the guy. My men are interrogating him right now. Did you find anything?"

Batman shook his head. Nothing related to the case, anyway. "If the Mad Hatter finds out Audrey survived, he might try to kill her before she can identify him."

"She's under 24-hour police watch at Dawes Memorial."

"She can't stay there. The Hatter is most likely a medical professional working there. Hardly any of the staff there are native to Gotham. He would have the best chance to dispose of her there."

"That makes no sense," Jackie said.

"No, it makes perfect sense," Agent Harkness argued. "Until the staff says it's okay to move her, everyone who comes within twenty feet of her will have a background check done."

"That's not what I'm talking about. Dawes Memorial was built because of the Joker attacks, but it's staffed by people who aren't from Gotham. Wouldn't it make more sense to have people from Gotham work there?"

Agent Harkness dialed the police. "I'll get those background checks done now. We're going to get this guy. He's not getting away from me again."

While Jackie's father was turned away, Batman took the opportunity to slip out and begin his own watch, and Jackie waved goodbye to him.


	26. Chapter Twenty-Five

I came home Monday night from a long day at school to Jackie sitting at the table staring dreamily at a teacup and saucer with orange-red poppies painted around the edges.

"Have you found nirvana in a piece of china?" I asked her as I shook out the rain from my coat before hanging it on the coat rack.

"It got chipped at work and my boss said I could have it. I can't decide if I should make apple cider or tea first."

"Don't you have to go out fighting crime with Batman?"

She groaned and hid her head in her arms. "I spent the entire weekend trying to keep Dad from shooting Batman. And for some reason, Batman still wanted to discuss the case with Dad. It was not productive at all, and I'm starting to wonder if he has a death wish."

"As much as I love and trust in Dad's shooting abilities, I think Batman's not the one that needs protecting in this scenario. So you're no closer to finding the Mad Hatter?"

"Nope." She stood up and put on her jacket that was hanging on the back of her chair. "I brought some chicken and rice home from work that you can have for dinner. I have no idea how to pronounce what it's called, but the chefs assure me that it's delicious."

I felt a twinge of disappointment that she was leaving so soon. "Going to the hospital again?"

"Just to check on Audrey. Then Batman wants me to patrol the city. Can't just drop everything for one minor serial killer." Everything about her clipped tone suggested that she wanted to do just that, but Batman was giving her assignments to keep her out of his way. Not that he was her boss or anything, but she found it best to just do as he said.

"Call me if you need help."

"Will do." She gave me a hug goodbye, and left out the front door.

When she was gone, I set some textbooks on the table, reheated the dinner Jackie provided for me, and settled in for a wonderful night of Chemistry homework. Specifically, we had a small section on Michael Faraday to study that I was particularly interested in.

My bliss was interrupted twice by my cell phone. Because I promised Jackie I would answer it if she needed me, I checked the caller ID. James Carroll. As miserable as our last date was, I hadn't officially told him we were finished yet, so I answered my phone. "Hello James."

"Jenny, how are you? How's school?" he asked smoothly as if there was nothing wrong.

"James, this just isn't going to work out."

"What are you talking about?" Definitely in denial.

"Us. It's not going to happen. I'm sorry."

"We just have to try! Why don't I take you to this nice place I know of – "

"No. I don't want to go out with you anymore. Goodbye James." I hung up without waiting for his answer.

Twenty minutes later, I got another call. This time, the number was blocked. All my instincts told me it was Mr. Carroll calling again in a desperate bid for my love, but there was also the chance that it was Jackie, so I had to answer it.

"Is this Jackie?" I said.

"No, it's James." There was a tremor in his voice like he had been crying. "Or Jim. All my friends call me Jim. I'm so sorry we got off on the wrong foot."

"Don't do this to me," I moaned.

"I was thinking that we could be friends." Ugh. This man would not let me be light footed with him, so I would just have to be heavy handed.

"Not even on Facebook. Don't call me again." Then I cut him off again.

At ten-thirty, I wrapped up my last page of notes and headed for bed. While going through my sock drawer for some warm socks for the night, I noticed that I had to go digging deeper than usual for my heavy hiking socks. (Not that I go hiking; I just get cold toes.) Not only that, but I got the sense that my socks stock was smaller than it should have been. I did a quick mental inventory of the socks in the hamper and vs. what socks were in the drawer. I concluded that I was missing one pair of white nylon stockings.

Odd. Jackie must have borrowed them. It didn't bother me that she stole my clothes, but she doesn't have a reason to wear them. Especially not white. I'd have to ask her when she came home.

* * *

The next night, I had three ignored calls from James Carroll by the time I was on my way home. I got off the bus with my nose in a textbook, looking like an absent-minded student by all appearances. In reality, I can't read while walking, but it keeps people from noticing that I'm watching them. I was sort of following a Hispanic single mother burnt out by two jobs on our way back to the same apartment complex. She must have moved in recently while I was at work.

I passed a nondescript green sedan parked in the place I normally would have put my car if I still had mine. Dad had my rental because he needed it more than I did. The reason I normally parked here in the street is because there is a direct line of sight between my window and the car, perfect for keeping an eye on it. Or to keep an eye on my window.

Using my book as a cover, I casually looked back at the car out of the corner of my eye. My peripheral vision managed to catch the shadow of someone in the driver's seat, but not much else due to the tinted windows.

I raced into my apartment hoping to find Jackie, but she was still at work. With a job that let her sleep late, she often worked shifts that went late into the night. Not only would I be eating dinner alone, but I didn't have someone to help me check out the car.

After making sure my blinds were closed and the curtains were drawn, I found a small pair of binoculars and peeked out of the edge of the window without disturbing the blinds too much. I was still at a disappointing angle to see much. The license plates were out of view, the windows were too tinted to see much in the dark, and the shadow I saw earlier was gone. Maybe I was just imagining someone out there. In either case, Jackie's days of going out the window were over, and Batman would be forbidden to step foot anywhere near my apartment.

I filled a saucepan with water and set it on the stove to boil so I could make some pasta before I took my stuff to my room. I kicked off my pumps and put them in their designated place on the shoe rack. That was when I noticed that there was a pair of empty shoe hooks. My black Mary-Janes were gone.

I went through the back of my closet, hoping that I had forgotten to put them back where they belonged, but it was as clean as I had left it when I went to work this morning. Then I checked the rest of my room, which turned up nothing. Out of desperation, I went to Jackie's room and went through her things. She was building up a collection of white blouses and black skirts, but my Mary-Janes weren't there.

 _Have you been borrowing some of my clothes?_ I texted Jackie. Then I heard my saucepan whistling as the water boiled, and I tried to turn my attention back to my dinner.

But as I stirred in the bowtie pasta and heated up some spaghetti sauce, my mind kept going back to my shoes. Where in the world could they have gone? As much as I wanted Jackie to have taken my things, I ultimately knew that it wasn't like her. Losing things wasn't like me either. I didn't want to think about the other possibility. Unfortunately, being me, my brain doesn't not think.

Someone's been in my apartment.

* * *

"Goodnight Jenny," said Mrs. Miller as she left the office.

I was still catching up on some filing, having been distracted all day. "Goodnight. Drive safely," I said with a small wave. She gave me a smile and left via the elevator. The last couple people in the office were me, Mr. Wayne, and a couple interns who were stuck working on an IT problem on the other end of the floor.

Mr. Wayne exited his office with a briefcase in hand and a date on his phone. From the tone of the conversation, it was falling through. He hung up as soon as he reached my desk. "Well that's one reservation that's gone to waste. Hey, Jenny, are you interested in dinner tonight?"

I straightened up and tried to form a response. "Um, I can't. I've got softball practice tonight."

Something in my hesitant answer made his ears prick. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. Why?"

"You just seem … out of it today. Maybe it's just me."

I took a deep breath before I answered. "No, it's not. You remember the guy who gave me the flowers? He's not taking no for an answer and he won't stop calling me."

"You can block his number, can't you?"

"Well, yes. I just hope that's enough for him to get the message. I'll be fine."

He didn't look like he believed me, but he didn't press the issue. "Okay. Have a good time at softball."

"Thanks. Goodnight Mr. Wayne."

As soon as I finished with the filing, I collected my things and left the building for the train station. Once at the train station, I found the restroom and cleared a place at a sink with a mirror. Then I filled my hands with cold water and splashed it on my face.

While water dripped off my face, I stared at the mirror and asked myself, _Why couldn't you have just accepted dinner? Why did you have to lie?_ The simple answer is that I didn't want to change my plans. The complicated answer is that I'm an idiot.

I dried my face with a towel, opened up my bag of tricks, and pulled out some makeup wipes, a tube of dark foundation, bobby pins, and a hair elastic. I cleaned off the professional makeup I had worn all day with the wipes and took off my coat to keep it clean. Then I pulled my hair back into a french braid before I started applying the foundation.

This step took quite a bit of time as I had to make it look natural and that wasn't an easy thing to do. When I was done with my face, I covered my hands with the foundation. When I was done, I looked somewhat Hispanic. To add to the effect, I darkened my eyebrows and eyelashes since my blonde lashes didn't look the part. I imagine the women passing in and out of the bathroom at this time gave me some odd looks, but none of them questioned me. I respected their desire to stay out of my business.

I folded the tail of my braid onto my head and pinned it there with the bobby pins. Then I took out a curly black wig out of my bag and placed it carefully over my hair. With some strategically placed pins and some combing, the wig looked like my real hair. For the final touch, I wrapped my coat around my waist to give me some weight. Then I took out a completely different, well worn and dirty coat from my bag and put that on along with some sensible but out of fashion flats.

With some final minor alterations, I looked like a Hispanic single mother burned out by two jobs. Then I collected my things, hunched over to lose three inches of my height, and left the restroom to go buy a ticket for the train.

By the time I made it home, I had been pushed around enough to want to commit a homicide and my back was hurting with trying to be smaller. I got off the bus a stop before my usual one and shuffled slowly home as if my feet were killing me. I wanted nothing more than to just run home, but I still had a part to play. Half of a good disguise is the acting, not just the costume. So I kept my pace deliberately slow.

Before long, my patience was rewarded. The same green sedan was parked in the same place as it was yesterday. Even more worrying was the fact that it had moved only slightly. The driver had left and come back to the exact same spot. There really was no reason to be parked there, especially when there were a hundred other better parking spots.

I pulled my phone out of my pocket, turned on the camera function, and hid it in my arm. As I passed the sedan, I took several pictures of the license plates, the windows, and the driver. Then I put my phone away so I could look at it later.

I got the mail from my box, then climbed the stairs to the third floor slowly, with an aching back. When I made it into my apartment, I threw my keys onto the table, my mail into the trash, and my bags somewhere on the couch,all so I could get at my phone. I wiped some of the foundation off my hand onto my filthy coat and went through the pictures I took.

So the car is a Chevrolet with a couple dings in the bumper. Unfortunately, the front license plate had come off and the back license plate was covered in mud. I could make out an X, but other than that, the letters were too obscured to make anything out. As for the mud, it looked like it came from the south side of town, with some wood chips mixed in like it had come from a playground. The mud on the license plate was deliberate.

As for the picture of the driver, he was hidden too. There wasn't a whole lot I could see through the window. As for what I could see, the driver sort of had James' blond hair. Maybe. Definitely had his build, but I couldn't be sure of his height. I could make out a beard, but that could have been fake for all I knew. Still, I finally had a lead. For the first time this week, I felt my sense of dread lifting.

I took my stuff back to my room so I could put it away and get changed. I unpinned my wig, put it back in its plastic bag, and put it with the others in a drawer. Then I hung my coat on a hanger and put it in a dry-cleaner's bag so it wouldn't get everything else dirty, so I could hang it up in the back of my closet. However, when I pushed the clothes aside to get some room, I nearly dropped everything in shock.

My blue and white cocktail dress – my favorite dress – was gone. Vanished. Missing. _Stolen_. This had gone beyond Jackie borrowing my clothes. Someone had broken into my apartment while I was at work because my dress was definitely there this morning, and taken it.

I dialed Jackie as I cleaned off the rest of my disguise. Thankfully, she answered. "Hello?"

"Jackie, are you close to coming home?"

"I have another hour left on my shift. What's up?"

"Someone broke into our apartment. The only thing I can see that they've taken is one of my dresses. You haven't been borrowing any of my shoes or socks, have you?"

"No. Your stuff doesn't fit me. I can spontaneously get sick."

"No. It's not a big deal. Finish your shift. Just … come home before you go out crime fighting please. I think we need to put in some new security measures."

"Sounds good. I'll see you soon."

I let Jackie get back to work, finished putting my disguise away, and went to the kitchen to make dinner. Since I was skipping class, I had plenty of time to make something good, but I just couldn't make up my mind or figure out if I actually wanted to make food. I couldn't even figure out what food I actually had. My mind just kept going back to the fact that the sanctity of my apartment had been violated. I checked my doorknob several times to see how the intruder got in. So far as I could tell, there weren't any scratches on the lock from any lock-picks. My spare key was still buried in a fake sprinkler head in the lawn out of sight of the green sedan. By all appearances, it hadn't been touched in weeks. They had to be really good with a lock-pick in order to get in.

With nothing else to do, I got a ticonderoga pencil from the junk drawer and a cheese knife from the knife block, and started chopping up the pencil lengthwise. I extracted the graphite core and threw away the metal/eraser end before slicing up the rest of the pencil. When Jackie came home, I had a collection of thin wood pieces about two inches long by a millimeter thick.

"Why did you destroy a perfectly innocent pencil?" she asked me. She set her backpack down on the counter, which sent some sawdust flying due to the resulting gust of air.

"We're going to put these in the door frame when we leave. If they're not there, it means someone's in the apartment."

She picked up one of the pieces to inspect it. "Kind of like _Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy_?"

"Exactly. Except it should work this time. Also, we're going to put some figurines in the windows. If they're moved or broken, we'll know someone used the window."

"Oh, I've done that before. Except I used cups of beans and counted them every night."

"Perfect. Just remember that it doesn't work unless you reset them every time you leave."

* * *

I did not tell Jackie about the man following me, partly because she already had enough to deal with, and partly because I wasn't even sure that he was following me. He could be watching Jackie, or maybe this was all a massive coincidence for all I knew. In any case, it wasn't enough to be conclusive.

In the morning, I made some rice and raisins with apples for breakfast, braided my hair in a loose french braid, and put on some conservative makeup. From the window with my rice and raisins in hand, I watched the bus arrive at my stop and drive away. The sedan was still in that parking spot. When the bus pulled up, it started up its engine and gave a turn signal, but when the driver didn't see me get on the bus, he stopped flashing his lights and turned off the car. So he was planning on following the bus. This called for a change of pace.

There was one last option if I wanted to get to work on time. I finished off my bowl, filled up another one for Jackie, and went to her room. She mumbled something about coming in when I knocked, so I went inside. Batman kept her up late last night, and she had barely managed to tumble horizontally into bed.

"I'm running late today. Can you give me a ride to work?"

She raised her head off the bed and gestured for me to give her the bowl. "Okay. When do we leave?"

"As soon as you're done eating. And you've changed out of your armor. The sooner the better, though."

It took her looking down at her jacket before she would believe me. I left her so she could get ready, then made her a cup of coffee in her new teacup. Ten minutes later, she reemerged dressed in jeans, cowboy boots, a white t-shirt, and a black leather jacket and had two helmets, one under her arm and the other in her hand. Even though she still looked bleary-eyed, her face brightened up when she saw that she got to use her special teacup. "Ready to go?" she asked in between unladylike gulps.

"Yup." I put on my coat, grabbed my bag and keys, and we left out the front door. Before we went downstairs, I put two pieces of wood in the door frame close to the ground level, and then a third on the ground. If someone came in the door without noticing the wood, there would be three pieces on the floor. If someone did notice the wood, then I would come home to three pieces in the door frame. Jackie watched me to memorize where I put the slivers so she could repeat the same when she left for work.

Jackie gave me one of the helmets. I hoped that it wouldn't mess up my hair too bad, but there were more important things to worry about. Getting on her Ducati wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be, mostly because I was wearing a pantsuit this time and not a skirt. I held on to her waist and she started off with a sudden burst of speed.

Turning my head in a motorcycle helmet wasn't easy, and I didn't like the fact that it took away most of my peripheral vision, but I managed to catch a glimpse of the people following us through the rear-view mirrors. As soon as we passed the green sedan, I saw it suddenly start its engine and pull out to follow us. However, Jackie naturally drives to lose tails, and she wove us into traffic where he vanished.

Since Jackie only had one ear and a helmet covering it, giving her directions was a bit difficult. Not impossible, though. With some simple hand signals and tapping, I was able to tell her how to get to Wayne Tower. Two taps for turn ahead, one tap for turn here, the direction depending on which hand I used.

We pulled into the parking garage under Wayne Tower so she could let me off. I attached my helmet to the back of her bike so I wouldn't have to carry it home. She pulled up her visor to talk to me. "I have to work tonight, so I can't pick you up. Is that okay?"

"That's fine. I'll just take the bus like usual. Thanks for the lift."

I waved goodbye to her as she drove out of the garage. I watched her rejoin traffic and turn the wrong way back towards home. Just as she made her turn, I noticed that she passed a familiar green sedan that was signaling to turn into the parking garage. Not one of the many things I felt like dealing with today, and I handled it the only way I knew how: I ran.

I took the first elevator up to the top floor and took refuge at my desk and in my work. As long as I was here, I was safe.

* * *

On his way out of the office, Mr. Wayne stopped by my desk for any messages he might have missed while he was in meetings. I had plenty of messages, but only two for him. "You're clear for your meeting on Monday, and I've arranged accommodations for the representatives from Japan at the Marriott. They're looking forward to meeting with you."

"Hm." Somehow, I don't think he was listening to me. "Is everything alright?"

"Yes. Everything's coming along fine."

"I'm not talking about work." He turned the chair in front of my desk around and sat down, leaning an arm on the chair back. "You braided your hair today."

"So? Sometimes I braid my hair." I didn't mean to be so defensive, but he was aiming at something I didn't want to discuss with him.

"You've never braided your hair to work before, and you're showing distinct signs of helmet hair."

Dang. I thought I had gotten rid of that. I shrugged. "I was late, so I got my sister to give me a ride on her motorcycle."

"Why were you running late?"

"My alarm clock didn't go off. I was rushing."

"You don't wake up late, Jenny. You braided your hair and wore slacks because you wanted Jackie to give you a ride. As to why ..." He paused so he could study me some more with his hand on his chin. "I suspect that it has something to do with the intrusive nature of James Carroll."

I bit my lip for a second, trying to figure out how to get out of this questioning. "You, Mr. Wayne, are smarter than you let on."

"And you are trying to change the subject. He's not just calling you, is he. What's really going on?"

Well my sister's a vigilante, my dad is in town chasing a serial killer that I'm not supposed to know about, but I do, someone's been breaking into my house, I have a lab due today, I'm being followed, and James won't stop calling me. I picked on the one that I could explain the best. "James Carroll isn't letting up. He figured out my work number, he's sent me two cards. And I'm pretty sure I'm being followed." I admitted that last one quietly.

Mr. Wayne's expression went from bemusedly worried to gravely concerned. "Have you filed a restraining order?"

"Over what? I don't know that it is James Carroll following me, I don't even know for sure that I am being followed, and he hasn't made any threats against me. There's nothing I can do except wait for it to get worse. All I'm worried about so far is one car parked in the same spot two nights in a row that has a clear line of sight to my living room window. I've tried taking a look at it on my way to and from the bus stop, but I just can't see anything."

"What happened to your car?"

"I lent it to my dad because he wanted a car that wouldn't stand out."

"Did he follow you here?"

"I think so."

"Then take one of the company cars." I started to protest since being in the middle of a mass of people could keep me safe, but he cut me off. "Jenny, you are an asset to this company and I want to keep you safe. More than that, you deserve to feel safe getting to and from work. Do you understand?"

The absolute sincerity in his voice shocked me, and I was nearly at a loss for words. "Yes, Mr. Wayne. Thank you."

"Make sure you call the police before things get worse, and if you need anything, you have my number."

"Nothing's going to happen," I assured him, "but I will. Definitely. Thank you."

He stood up with a smile, happy that he had solved a problem in the world. "You're very welcome. Have a good night!" he chirped as he left the office.

This actually made me feel much, much better, mostly because I would be changing my daily patterns a bit. I really didn't feel like going home with a different disguise every night anyhow. I pulled up the list of available cars and picked one that sounded like it wasn't as expensive as everything else. Driving huge bundles of money always felt a little ridiculous to me because I didn't trust myself or the other drivers not to crash or crash into me.

I retrieved the key from the security desk downstairs and found the car in the parking garage. It was a sterling gray Lincoln Town Car made in 2014. According to Wayne Enterprises' records, it was the oldest company car. Only the best for Mr. Wayne's employees. I unlocked the car door with the key fob, carefully slid into the driver's seat, adjusted everything so I could drive safely, double checked that I hadn't ruined anything yet, and then dared to turn on the car.

Even the engine running smoothly felt too good for me, but I could see why Jackie was willing to shell out the big bucks for a very nice Ducati instead of buying just a decent bike. This power felt good, and I was eager to use it on the road.

The first place I took my new (borrowed) car was school since, well, school. I almost couldn't wait to be done with chemistry, even though science is how I escape from the word, by diving straight back into it. Still, there were things to be taken care of at home, and I couldn't help but be nervous that someone would hurt my car while I was away.

As soon as the professor let me go, I raced happily for home. To add to the good things of my day, the parking spot that I could see from my window was empty. The green sedan was nowhere in sight. I hadn't even seen it anywhere near school. That must mean that it was all just a big coincidence and/or I was moving too fast and unexpectedly for the driver to keep up. I took the empty spot just to spite the driver of the green sedan.

I took the stairs two at a time to get home faster. I put my key in the lock, turned it and opened the door. No pieces of wood fell out of the door. In fact, there were three on the ground already. Someone had already come in, and according to the lights, Jackie wasn't home.

I grabbed the bat sitting next to the door, kicked off my shoes quietly, and tip toed inside. Then I began to go through my entire apartment. The living room was clear, as was the kitchen, the bathroom, and both the bedrooms. Just to make sure, I looked under every chair, behind every shower curtain (the total of which is 1), and under every bed. While doing so, I checked the cups of beans next to the windows. 25, 29, 27, with a pinto bean on top of each pile of red beans. No one was hiding in my apartment, and no one had touched the windows.

It took three sweeps before I believed myself and relaxed enough to turn on the lights and set down my bat. The next step was to figure out what had gone missing. From what I gathered, none of my clothes were missing, neither were any of Jackie's. I still had all of my shoes minus the Mary-Janes, my stack of textbooks was untouched, my mess of newspapers hadn't been moved from its proper location in front of the TV, and all of my toiletries were still organized correctly.

After a good hour of looking, I couldn't find anything missing. So someone broke in here for kicks and giggles. Or Jackie just forgot to put the wood slivers back in the door frame. It was plausible, despite being unlikely, so I decided to get dinner ready and do the dishes.

I filled up the sink with some hot, soapy water and cleaned the bowls from breakfast and the dishes from dinner last night that I hadn't felt like cleaning up. The last thing I went to wash was Jackie's teacup and saucer, but as I ran a hand through the soapy water, I realized they weren't there. I checked the cupboard, but Jackie hadn't cleaned them and put them away. As far as I could tell, Jackie's cup and saucer was the item that was stolen today. She would not be happy to hear about this.

* * *

White stockings

Black Mary-Janes

Cocktail Dress

Teacup and saucer

The list didn't make sense to me. Why would James – if not him, _anybody_ – need any of these things? I could understand taking things that belonged to me, but the teacup threw me off.

I came home on Friday with my arms full of textbooks. Somehow the carrying capacity of a vehicle translates into a lot more things that I can study, but that I won't actually get around to reading. I unlocked the door and checked the door frame for the slivers of wood. Due to my books, I nearly missed them. One, two, three pieces of wood in the frame.

So my intruder was getting clever. He found the slivers of wood and thought to put them back. Maybe it wasn't James.

Jackie called me on my way in. "Hey Jenny! I won't be coming home tonight," she said breathlessly, almost like she was running.

"What's going on?" I asked her as I set my books down on the kitchen table.

"Dad called and said Audrey just woke up in the hospital. I'm going to go see her, see how she's doing. Will you be alright without me?"

"I'm sure I will. I have my collection of baseball bats to keep me company." I started walking through my house, counting the beans. 25, 29, 27.

"Okay. Call me if you need me to come beat someone up. I really feel like beating someone up tonight."

"Just make sure they deserve it." I started a cursory inspection of my things to figure out what had gone missing. I was just starting with my bedroom.

"Oh! And before you panic when you're missing one of your books, I borrowed _The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes_ because I needed something to read today."

"Okay, good to know." Instinctively, my eyes went to my packed bookshelf in my room to find the hole in the row. Oddly enough, I couldn't find it. "Be careful, alright."

After Jackie hung up, I got a chair from the kitchen and took it to my room so I could get to the top shelf where all my Cs were. Yes, one of my Sherlock Holmes books by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was missing, but that wasn't surprising. The addition to my collection of authors whose last name started with C, was.

I pulled out a copy of _Alice in Wonderland_ by Lewis Carroll, printed by Barnes and Noble. I most certainly had not bought this book. A gift from my intruder?

"Curiouser and curiouser."


	27. Chapter Twenty-Six

The news sent an electric jolt through his body. According to the message sent by Commissioner Gordon, Audrey Garrison had woken up from her coma and would recover. _She would be fine._ The thought of a lead gave him a surge of hope that they could finally catch the Mad Hatter. More than that, Batman could even get his hands on him and give him a pummeling the police wouldn't be allowed to give him.

But getting the necessary information from Audrey had to be handled with delicacy. Push too hard and she would probably clam up. But give her too much time, and another girl could be in danger of dying. Furthermore, he doubted that he could talk to her himself, not just because of the police presence, but because he did come off as a terrifying presence. Someone with more tact would have to go in his place.

He met up with Tex on the roof of Dawes Memorial Hospital where she was just getting off the phone with her father. " _I know Dad. Batman wants to catch the Mad Hatter as much as you do. Well can you at least call me if you need help? Dad, this is Gotham. None of the police admit it, but they all have to rely on him at one point or another. Fine. Love you._ " She hung up with a sigh and put her phone away.

"I take it he's refusing our help," said Batman as he treaded lightly onto the roof.

She jumped slightly and recomposed her calm. " _He's refusing your help specifically, and he never believed I could help in the first place. In either case, Audrey's not talking anyway._ "

"She can't talk or she won't talk?"

" _The doctors say she might have lost her ability to talk. Dad thinks she just doesn't want to. She doesn't have any family in town, none of her friends have shown up to support her, and the only people who are trying to talk to her are the doctors and cops. If she can talk, I can see why she wouldn't want to_."

Batman nodded. "She's scared. Let's give her a friend."

" _How?_ "

"Well you saved her and you've been coming back to check on her. You're more of a friend than anyone else she knows, even if she doesn't know it."

She seemed to narrow her eyes. " _I think I like where this is going, but because it's coming from you, I'm getting suspicious._ "

"All we need to do is have you talk to her."

Jackie laughed at him. " _Easier said than done. They've got policemen watching her room, and Dad has specifically forbidden Tex and Batman from coming in._ "

Jacqueline going in as herself was out of the question because Agent Harkness wasn't supposed to divulge details of the case to his family. The other option was attaching a cable to Tex's belt and lowering her into Audrey's room. This was not an option she was fond of.

" _Oh come on!_ " she protested. " _I'm going to get caught._ " Still, she tested the strength of the cord and the knot like a good sport and jumped off the edge so Batman could help her rappel down the side of the building. Then she unlocked the window, climbed inside, and unhooked herself from the cable.

Intending just to listen in, Batman secured the end of the grappling cable to the building's edge and lowered himself down to Audrey's room. He found a spot to sit next to the window where he could still watch what was going on in the room without the patient seeing him. Somehow, in between the time Tex unhooked herself and he found a spot on the window ledge, she had managed to not only get Audrey to attack her with a pillow, but find reason to take off her helmet. Batman reigned in his fury at her stupidity so he could save it for later.

"I'm not going to hurt you!" she protested as quietly as she could.

The tiny blonde girl continued to thrash her, but Tex just patiently took it. Audrey had white gauze wrapped around her eye and head, and IV tubes springing out of her thin arms. How she was managing to swing a pillow was beyond his comprehension.

"My name is Tex. I wanted to see if you were okay." She held up her hands in a show of peace and barely tried to dodge the pillow. The girl couldn't aim well anyway.

Audrey stopped with her fluffy down assault and just frowned at her with a raised eyebrow as if saying, " _You're_ Tex?"

"Yeah, I found you after you were dumped. You probably don't remember. Is it okay if we talk for a bit? Or, if you prefer, I can talk."

Without giving any indication that she would ever respond, Audrey invited Tex to take a seat in the chair clear across the room. Tex gave a half smile of thanks, turned the chair around, and sat down. Audrey got back into bed, keeping her pillow in her arms as a sort of shield.

"Are you getting enough morphine?" Audrey nodded. "Good. It's always the worst to wake up from something like ... what you went through, and think that it hasn't ended when it already has."

Pulling her hair back, Tex revealed the scars along the left side of her head in the moonlight. Well healed, but obviously painful at the time. "I could barely breathe when I woke up. I didn't realize that when the bomb had gone off, I had inhaled some of the fireball and singed my lungs. I thought I was still burning, and I couldn't scream. Thankfully I had a good doctor who was quite generous with the pain meds. Knowing the staff of Dawes Memorial, you'll be in good hands."

Audrey reached out a hand, beckoning Tex to come closer. She joined her, sitting on the bed close enough for the girl to brush back her hair herself, running her fingers over the scars. Tex unzipped her jacket and pulled it off so she could see how far down the scars ran. Her entire shoulder had burn scars that tapered off down her arm. Tex's missing ear seemed to fascinate Ms. Garrison the most, however.

"I was completely deaf for a few weeks. Completely burst the one eardrum, and there was no hope for the other ear. Still can't hear out of that side, as you can probably tell. At least I still hear half of what people are saying, and usually it's good stuff. I'm a lip reader too, so no one actually felt sorry for me. That was nice because it wasn't like I changed just because I got exploded by a bomb," she said with a slight laugh. Then the laugh left her eyes. "That's not actually true. Trauma tends to change a person more than we care to admit. My boss said I got darker, which is something I _really_ didn't want to happen."

The girl retreated back into her stony expressions. "I'm guessing you were a little more verbose before I met you," Tex said. She gave a slight nod.

"Can I tell you what I know, Audrey? I know that what happened to you was completely unfair. I know it was terrifying. I know that you are scared of telling the police what happened to you. But I know that it's okay to be scared. It doesn't last as long as you think it will.

"What scares me is knowing that this man that kidnapped you and tried to lobotomize you, is going to hurt and kill someone else. My colleagues and I have seen this before. You're not the first, and unless you can help us, you won't be the last. He's usually far, far worse. With you, he acted in rage. The other girls have been methodically selected. We call him the Mad Hatter because he likes to find girls that look like Alice from Alice in Wonderland; blonde, innocent, small, maybe even a little curious. He keeps them captive for several days or several weeks, torturing them physically and mentally. The bodies that have been found show signs of electroshock treatment, starvation, and lobotomies. By now, he's picked someone else and he's going to kill her."

Audrey scooted away from Tex, curling into a ball of fear.

"It's completely up to you, but _please_ talk to the police. Help us find this man so we can stop him."

Showing no sign of cooperation, Audrey just stared at Tex with her one good eye. After several long moments of extended silence, she got the message that she wasn't needed anymore, so she stood and put her jacket back on. "If you need someone to talk to, this is my number." Tex set a card down on the bedside table. "If you wonder if I'm still awake, I probably am."

With that, she replaced the helmet and climbed out the window.

Batman grabbed her arm and pulled her back up to the roof as soon as she made her escape. Tex was a little surprised at the gesture, but held on nonetheless. Once on the roof and away from prying ears, he laid into her. "What was that?" he roared.

Tex picked a different way to interpret the question than the one he intended. " _The police are already going to question her. I didn't see the sense in doing it twice. Besides, it's more legal this way._ " She brushed him off like his question was answered, but he pulled her back.

"What's going to happen when she tells the police you showed her your face?"

" _She's not going to tell them anything._ "

"How do you know she won't get her voice back?"

" _Even if she does, Audrey won't tell them._ "

"And if she does?"

" _I'll just deal with the fallout. You don't need to worry._ "

"You can't just expose yourself like that without knowing what the repercussions are."

" _Do you really see this as being someone you'd want to confide in?_ " she demanded, pointing at her mask. " _If I was her, I'd never talk to me or you._ _It was dark and her eyesight is still recovering. There are plenty of other redheads she can mistake me for._ "

"That is not a risk you should be taking. You could put her and your family in danger."

" _Would you just stop?_ _I don't have to do everything your way!_ " she snapped. " _Believe it or not, I do know what I'm doing every now and again, and unlike you, I speak 'Scared Little Girl.'"_

"How am I supposed to trust you when you off the books like this? I can't read _any_ of your moves or motivations."

" _So, me just being a good person doesn't cut it for you? Do you hold the rest of Gotham to that standard?_ "

"Not when you're working with me."

" _Okay, let me put it this way. I know it's incredibly difficult for control freaks like you to not know everything there is to know about everyone. But I have had a lot of practice with keeping secrets. You can keep trying to find them out, but you won't find anything I don't want you to find._ " She pushed the button on her collar to retract her helmet. "You think you seeing my face was an accident? Because it _never_ is."

Batman leaned down, getting right up in her face. He knew she wouldn't be intimidated by the move, but he wanted his point made clearly. "I do not have to let you follow me around like a little fangirl. I know you would rather have my cooperation than work alone. The only reason I continue to work with you is that you have, so far, proven yourself an asset. But that arrangement does not have to continue if I don't want it to."

Tex's cell phone buzzing with a text from her father interrupted their little spat. "Dad says that Audrey's requested to speak to the police immediately. They're sending a sketch artist. He'll be here in a minute. See? Audrey trusts human faces." She pushed Batman out of her face with one hand and walked away to the other edge of the roof.

Recognizing that she needed her space, Batman turned back to the situation going on a few floors below his feet. He put one hand to his ear so he could eavesdrop on the conversation with the bugs he'd planted while Tex had spoken with Audrey.

Tex sat on the ledge, her legs dangling over the side and was unable to hear anything while Batman listened to the conversation and drank in everything of importance. For nearly an hour, neither of them moved from their positions, although Tex would occasionally look back at Batman, scowl, pace, or pretend like he didn't exist for a while.

All the while, Batman collected a list of pertinent details from her non-verbal descriptions. Details such as: Audrey's attacker was blond, Caucasian, about six feet tall, and 180 pounds. He forced her into the car with a gun, but he never used it. He drove her to an empty lot or field where he pushed her out and beat her. He primarily kicked her and hit her with a pipe or crowbar. Most of her injuries were on her right side, meaning he was either left handed or favored his left hand. She remembered he was mad at someone called Alice, but kept calling her Alice too. When he had spent all his energy, he put an icepick in her left eye, but he fumbled around with it and dropped it a couple times. Either he was nervous or his hand hurt. After that, she blacked out.

"She's almost finished with the sketch artist," Batman casually mentioned over his shoulder. "We should have a picture soon."

Tex threw a rock off into the parking lot below. "Great _._ "

"Are we going to be angry at each other all night?"

"Yep _,_ " she replied.

"You're not in Junior High, Jackie."

"I can act as immature as I darn well please, thank you very much."

He sighed in frustration. "Is it really just me that you're upset at?"

Surprisingly, she didn't answer him. Seeing as how he wasn't getting anything important from the bugs anymore, he went to Tex, crouching down next to her. She noticed his presence, but refused to look at him.

"Let me tell you what I've noticed about you," he said softly. "You're right, you are a good person. Probably more than anyone else in Gotham. But this case is bugging you more than when the Riddler nearly killed you or the Penguin blackmailed half of Gotham's elite. I have to ask, why would a case with a man playing with a young girl's brain, trying to turn her into his perfect puppet, bother you so much?"

Tears brimmed in her eyes as her face grew colder. "Stop."

"You're a good person, Jackie. But you're a Green Peace type of good person, not a vigilante. I think that all of this – this martial arts training, the metal hands, the armor – was all forced on you. You didn't want to become a warrior, but now you have to make the best of what you've been given."

"I'm not allowed to talk about it _._ " The answer was a reflex, one that had been drilled into her.

"They tried to play with your brain," he deduced. "Turn you into their puppet. That's why you hate the Mad Hatter."

Jackie shot to her feet. "Do not keep digging. You will not like what you find. I bury these things for a reason."

"I'm worried that you're making this case personal."

"You don't ever come across a case that just makes you angry that it's happening again?"

"All the time. But as soon as I let my personal feelings interfere ..." He let the sentence hang so Tex could fill it in as she would.

"The Mad Hatter still deserves to have his kneecaps removed with a rusty spoon."

"Probably." Batman noticed men coming out of the building with photocopies of a drawing of a man's face in hand. "I think they've got a picture to hand out. Let's see who it is." After she put her helmet back on, he took her in his arm and carried her down to the ground via a grappling cable.

As the last few agents bled out of the hospital, Tex caught Agent Harkness on his way out to his car. " _Agent Harkness!_ " she called even though he was obviously trying to ignore her. " _What do you have?_ "

"Look Ja – Tex," he said, barely managing to catch himself. "You can't be in on this. I already told you that you can go looking when this information is released to the public. Until then -"

He turned to his car, only to be cut short by Batman leaning against the door. "We'd rather help now," said the Dark Knight.

"I don't need it," Agent Harkness insisted.

Batman snatched the paper out of his hands and took a look at the face. The gray-and-white drawing looked vaguely familiar. He took a quick picture of it with a camera from his belt. Then he passed it to Tex. "Recognize him?"

Tex's body instantly stiffened. " _This is James Carroll, Jenny's terrible date. He punched me in the face._ "

"Carroll?" Agent Harkness repeated as he dialed his men. "It has to be a fake name."

" _He was mad at Jenny the night he attacked Audrey. I have to go home_." She barely paused to hand the paper back to her dad before she sprinted away to her motorcycle.

Batman was right behind her, headed for his Batpod, when something came over his radio. "Batman? Are you there?"

Tex must have left her radio at home. "Jenny? What's going on?" he asked as he waved Tex over.

Barely audible, she whispered, "It's the Mad Hatter. He's come for me. I'm hiding right now."

"Good. We're on our way. Are you well hidden?"

"No. ... He's going to take me."

"Then I need you to do a couple things. Put the earpiece in and describe him as best you can."

"Okay."

"And you need to get as much of his DNA evidence as you can. You need to fight back."

Her voice trembled. "Okay."

"Jenny, I am coming for you."

"I know." As Batman silently directed Tex to drive back to her apartment, Jenny remained quiet. Then she screamed. He heard breaking wood, scraps of images, a skull hitting the floor _hard_ , then an electronic squeal when the assailant found and smashed the radio.

" _What's going on?_ " Tex demanded.

"The Hatter's got Jenny."


	28. Chapter Twenty-Seven

The significance of _Alice in Wonderland_ was not lost on me. I read every one of Dad's cases when I lived at home, and I still go through them occasionally. Furthermore, I stay up to date on everything Jackie does. I knew about the Mad Hatter, and I knew that this was his calling card. I am the next victim of the Mad Hatter. I would be kidnapped, tortured psychologically and physically until I became Alice, lobotomized, and eventually starve to death when he grew tired of me. The fact that Dad hadn't been able to close the case yet meant there was almost no chance that Dad could rescue me in a worse case scenario.

But the knowledge paralyzed me like I had been thrown the idiot ball and I couldn't let go of it. I was vaguely aware that I was putting things back where they belonged, starting the dishwasher, cleaning up the kitchen, everything I would be doing if things were normal. There was an astonishing amount of things that I could do without my brain being completely there. Make my bed, brush my teeth, vacuum the living room, feed the fish, dust the furniture. I just wasn't there because I had resigned myself to the fact that I was going to die, and there was nothing my sister or dad or the police or Batman could do about it.

Somehow, my hands landed on my phone and a thought crossed my mind. I could call someone. Yes, that was a definite possibility. I opened my list of people on speed-dial and started at the beginning. Jackie. It went straight to voice-mail. "Hi, Jackie," I said. "Can you come home? Now? Please?"

Next, Dad. It rang and rang until the machine answered. "Hi Daddy. Can you please come home. I need you."

Imogen Watson. My poor neglected friend. Her's also rang straight through to voice-mail. "Hi Imogen. Call me back when you get the chance. I need to talk to you."

Bruce Wayne. I hesitated on this one. He's my boss. What could he do? He did say to call him if things got worse. Things have gotten worse. I selected him and hoped that the billionaire playboy prince of Gotham wouldn't be busy on a Friday night. Straight to the answering machine. "Hi Mr. Wayne. You said to call you if I needed help. Things are getting weird. I'm pretty sure I'm being stalked by a serial killer called the Mad Hatter. It might be James, it might not be, but the fact that his last name is Carroll is making me think that it is. Please call me back when you get a chance."

That last voice-mail gave me the wherewithal to stand up and examine myself and my situation. Yes, I was in danger. Yes, the green sedan was parked in its usual spot watching my window. Yes, I had managed to feed fish that I don't actually have, with cookie crumbs. Yes, I had a copy of _Alice in Wonderland_ in my hands. But I was not going to die. I survived Oswald Cobblepot and his cronies and I never wussed out like this. I marched (idiotically) into the face of danger. The Mad Hatter would not kill me after I survived that.

I looked at the time to see how much my shock had cost me. About two hours had passed since Jackie called me. I cursed my idiot ball. I could have run away to Imogen's place. Of course, as soon as I go outside, I'm dead meat. Call the police? Yes, that was definitely an option I should have considered a while ago. And if my place was bugged, James Carroll would have moved in by now if I had called them. Well, no time like the present.

_Knock knock knock!_

I darted to the door, grabbing my baseball bat and putting my stun gun within easy reach in my pocket. "James, is that you? I told you to leave me alone!"

"It's not James. My name is Jervis Tetch." The man's voice was muffled by the door, but it was definitely not Mr. Carroll. Even so, I was still deeply suspicious of anyone coming to my door that didn't resemble my family or Batman. "Are you going to answer the door?"

I put my eye to the peephole. This Mr. Tetch was dressed like a cab driver – brown jacket, dingy jeans, flat cap - had flat brown hair, and was a wiry sort of fellow. Just because I hadn't yet, I slid in the chain into the door to further secure it. "Unless you're a cop, you can just leave. I'm not interested in buying anything."

"I'm not a salesman, Jenny."

My heart froze in my chest. "How do you know my name?"

"I'm with the FBI. Your dad sent me." He pulled a wallet out of his inside jacket pocked and held his badge up to the peephole. I read through the basic data, which seemed to be in order, but without having it in my hand, I couldn't tell if it was made out of the right material. "Can I come in?"

"You're not on my dad's team, and he would have called if he was sending someone."

"I'm stationed in Gotham. I'm not on his team. Could you please open the door?"

"Not unless Dad calls and says I can trust you." I tightened my grip on the bat to keep my fingers from shaking.

"Why do you have to make this so difficult?" he groaned. And then kicked the door.

The door shook on its hinges at the force of the blow. The frame cracked where the bolt went into the wall. The chain was keeping the door from swinging open. I stepped back and raised my bat for his next blow. I saw him give me a malicious grin, step back, and kick the door again. The chain shattered and the door flew open, nearly hitting me in the face. I jumped backwards just in time.

The wiry man darted in through the shattered remains of my door. I reacted instinctively and swung my bat hard enough to hit a home run, aiming for his stomach. I hit him at least twice, feeling bones crack under my bat, but Jervis was stronger than he looked. He could take my blows and grabbed my bat mid-flight. For a split second, neither of us could move. Then my bat was ripped out of my fingers. The next instant, Jervis' fist smashed into my face. My cheek tingled with the sudden rush of blood, but I tried my best to ignore it so I could grab the stun gun from my pocket.

I switched on my stun gun and brandished it in front of me as I backed away. The electricity snapped audibly, letting him know I wasn't playing around. "You get away from me!" I growled.

His cold laugh cut through my forced confidence. "Poor choice of weaponry, Jenny. You want something that puts distance between yourself and your assailant, like an actual Taser -" I cut him off with a thrust to his ribs. It caught him by surprise, but somehow despite his twitching, he grabbed my wrist and yanked the stun gun out of my hands too. I retreated, but he tackled me on his way to the ground.

I fell on my face, hitting my chin. Jervis was having a hard time recovering. I turned around, kicked him in the nose, and scrambled to my feet. I needed a new weapon from the kitchen, and realized too late that I was going to be cornered. Grabbing the biggest knife in the block, I turned around only to find Jervis blocking my way with a wild look in his eyes and his hands up and ready to pounce. I slashed at him with the knife in my hand, but he only jumped just out of reach. He was right about having a weapon that could give me some distance.

Without turning around, I took another two knives out of the block and threw each of them at him. I wasn't sure if they hit him or not because I used the distraction to hop over the counter and race to my room. Jervis just barely missed me as I ran past him, brushing my shirt with his fingertips. I slammed my door shut, put a chair under the handle, and pushed my desk in front of that. I didn't have time or the strength to move my bed. A second later, Jervis rammed a shoulder into the door in an effort to barge in, but my barricade held. For the moment.

I could not stay in this room, but I had an escape. I moved the cup of beans next to my window over a bit, opened it up, climbed out, and closed it so it wouldn't look like I had gone out this way. I used the fire escape to go over to Jackie's window. She comes in and out of this way all the time, so it was easy enough to unlock it and climb inside, locking it behind me.

Jackie's room still looked like a guest bedroom with just a dresser, a bed, and the built-in closet. My options were limited. I couldn't leave because Jervis was right outside, still banging on the door. I thought I heard the wood splinter and him tear through the desk to get into my room. It wouldn't be long before he realized I wasn't hiding in there.

Come on come on come on. Jackie was a master of hide-and-seek. Mostly because she knew how to hide in unorthodox places, like the ceiling. I did not have the flexibility or the strength to try that, but there was always the false back in her closet. The back just slid aside, giving me about a small compartment about a foot deep. It would have to do. I closed the closet door, then slid the false back closed and held my breath.

The rampage quieted outside my room as he soon realized that I wasn't in there. Even after turning over the bed, he was confused. I imagine he looked out the window and figured I went down to the ground and ran. But there wasn't a ladder there, so it was impossible for me to run that way.

My hand brushed against something small and encased in hard plastic on the ground. It was the radio Batman gave Jackie. Would it be appropriate for me to call him and pull him away from his crime fighting? I decided that yes, yes it was. He was looking for the Mad Hatter anyway. What better way to help him? I slipped in the earpiece.

"Batman? Are you there?" I said as loudly as I dared.

"Jenny? What's going on?" he growled.

"It's the Mad Hatter. He's come for me. I'm hiding right now." I felt like I had a loudspeaker to my mouth.

"Good. We're on our way. Are you well hidden?"

"No." I heard footsteps coming closer to my door. I couldn't stay here forever. "He's going to take me."

"Then I need you to do a couple things. Put the earpiece in and describe him as best you can."

"Okay."

"And you need to get as much of his DNA evidence as you can. You need to fight back."

"Okay." Jackie's door creaked open.

"Jenny, I am coming for you," Batman said insistently, as if he could direct the way the universe fell.

"I know." I barely mouthed the words.

Jervis stepped softly through the room. His footsteps took him to the window, where he kicked some spilled beans around. Twenty-Seven of them. I realized in horror that I forgot about the beans.

"Interesting security feature," he remarked. "Kind of like the wood in the door frame. But once you know someone's been inside your home, what do you think you're going to do about it?" I heard him get down on the floor, his steel-toed boots making a dull thud on the hardwood floor as he knelt down. He was looking under the bed. "Nope. You're too smart to hide under there. But what about the closet?"

A bit of light shone through the crack of the false back as Jervis opened the door wide. His hand went through the top shelf, making sure I wasn't up there. He continued to look around the closet for nearly and entire agonizing minute. Then he gave up and closed the door.

"'The time has come,' the Walrus said," he muttered as he swept through the room again. "'To talk of many things./Of shoes, of ships, and sealing wax/Of Cabbages and Kings/And why the sea is boiling hot/And whether pigs have wings.'"

I bit my lip so hard that it started to bleed, but I dared not make a sound. How was I wrong about the identity of the Mad Hatter? I should have been able to tell that James is too incompetent. Now everyone will go chasing James Carroll, and not Jervis Tetch. The thought that my mistake will keep me from being rescued turned my stomach to mush. My ears strained to listen, but I finally heard his footsteps leave the room. I gave him another few moments to get even further away.

I let out the breath I didn't know I'd been holding.

Suddenly, Jervis ripped open the door of the closet. An instant later, he tore apart the false back of the closet and grabbed my hair. I screamed as he threw me across the room, hitting my head on the foot of Jackie's bed. Then he pulled me back up by an arm so he could punch me a few times in the jaw. All the while I screamed things like, "Six feet tall! 180 pounds! Brown hair! Middle-class laborer!" I screamed right up until he found the earpiece, ripped it out, and stepped on it.

My head rang and probably was bleeding, but Jervis hadn't finished with me yet. He took me by my feet, dragged me out of Jackie's room and into the living room. I grabbed anything I could get my hands on: the bathroom door frame, the living room bookcase, the couch, the television. I was making quite a mess. I held onto a couch hard enough that I was able to kick myself free and start running again, but Jervis just pushed me head first into the television.

The glass rained down on my hair. As I pushed myself off the TV, I grabbed one of the pieces and slashed at his face and arms, embedding it into my palm. I didn't exactly feel the pain so much as I felt determined to spatter his blood everywhere. Frustrated and desperate, Jervis put a knee into the small of my back to keep me from getting up again, and I cried out at the sharp pain in my spine.

"Your father was not lying when he said you were clever," he said, fiddling with something in his hands. It sounded like a cap unscrewing from a bottle, but I couldn't see what it was. A sweet smell permeated the air, an intoxicating scent that made me dizzy. "Unfortunately, so am I."

"He's going to find you, and you're going to pay," I threatened through my teeth and tears.

"If he was capable of finding the real Mad Hatter, he would have found me already. Deep breaths." He held a cloth soaked with the sweet stuff – an ether, possibly sevoflurane, I noted – over my nose and mouth. I tried to hold my breath as long as possible, but it just wasn't possible to keep from inhaling without becoming dizzy either way.

As I sank deeper into sleep, Jervis took his knee off my back, then put his hand in my pocket, pulling out my phone. I was somewhat aware of him going through the pictures, deleting a few, then setting it on the ground and stomping on it a couple times. He checked my pulse with a couple fingers on my neck, pressed the cloth to my face even closer, and I fell off into sleep for good.

* * *

Tex made it home first, followed immediately by Batman. All she really had to see was the state of her door to know that they were too late. She took off her helmet, revealing a face that had gone deathly pale. "She might be hiding. She could still be here," she said desperately. Then she started a room to room search. "Jenny!" she called. "Jenny, where are you?"

Batman knew that her search would be in vain. However, he let her hold on to her brief, albeit hysteric, bit of hope while he took a better look around. The first thing of interest that he found was the remains of a Droid phone, violently and deliberately smashed. With a pair of tweezers, he picked through the remains until he found a memory card. It was badly damaged, more than likely beyond repair, but he might be able to pull something from it. He put it in a metal compartment that attached to his utility belt.

Jackie came back from her room. "I can't find her, the false back in my closet is completely destroyed, and there's blood on the floor."

Batman guided her to a chair away from the destruction, ordered her to, "Sit down. Breathe," and walked down the hall to her room. Jenny's door and room were completely torn apart and destroyed, but Jenny would have known better than to hide in there. Jackie had the better hiding places.

Jackie's room suffered far less than the other one. There were beans scattered on the floor next to the window, meaning someone had come in from outside via the window. The bed was pushed aside and the dresser was untouched. The blood was on the foot of the bed and on the floor next to it. Judging by the splatter patterns, someone had been hit by the bed and bled out on the floor for a moment. More than likely, this was Jenny's blood. The bed was a straight shot from the closet. The false back had been torn away and whoever was inside – Jenny – was thrown across the room.

Batman found something else of interest on the ground by the closet. It was the radio he had given Jackie, the one Jenny desperately tried to use. The assailant had crushed it to pieces too. Batman swept it all into another one of his metal compartments, erasing the existence of it entirely.

He returned to the living room to find Jackie pacing nervously, one of her hands opening and closing in a circle. The wall had a bit of blood spattered across it, in a different place than the rest of it. That victim had been standing. All the evidence suggested Jenny had been bleeding on the ground. Batman found a white cloth stained with blood by the shattered television. He picked it up and examined it. It was soaked in something that wasn't water and smelled sweet. "What do you make of it?" he asked Jackie.

She took it and sniffed it. "Could be chloroform." She sniffed it again, much deeper this time, and nearly fell backwards. Batman had to catch her before she hit the ground. "Nope. It's ether. Definitely ether."

"Why is your hand doing that?"

Jackie looked down at the hand that was repeatedly opening and closing. "Being a dinosaur?" It stopped, then started to make different shapes, like it was spelling something out. "Car-bon Mon-ox-ide. CO, it's saying CO." She put on her helmet and swept her gaze through the room. " _There's a carbon monoxide leak. It's probably why the neighbors haven't called the police or anything._ "

Just then, Agent Harkness arrived as the two of them were leaving the apartment. "What's going on? Where's Jenny?"

"The Mad Hatter kidnapped her," said Batman.

" _And there's a carbon monoxide leak. We have to evacuate the building._ " She pulled the fire alarm on her way down the hall. " _You two start downstairs!_ "

Batman retrieved two gas-masks from the Batpod and tossed one to Agent Harkness before he started on the bottom floor, pounding on the doors to wake up the residents. Several families from the third floor were coming down the stairs, woken up by the fire alarm. On the ground floor, the carbon monoxide was thickest, so he had to break in and pull them out. The first apartment had an asian family with two little girls. The girls weren't waking up, the mother had blue lips, and the father barely stirred. Batman had to carry each of them well away from the building, and lie them down on the grass. Getting them away from the source of the poisoning helped a bit, but they needed medical attention immediately.

As he was breaking down the third door of the floor, he heard the sirens of a fire truck and a couple paramedics. He carried out the little old woman and met up with Tex on the lawn. "We need to leave soon."

" _Top floor's evacuated. Dad's got one more apartment on his level,_ " she said as she laid a Hispanic woman down next to three children.

"This building has central air, doesn't it?"

" _I think so. It's a newer one._ "

"I need to find out what the source is. Go through the last apartment for me." With that last order, he went around to the back of the apartment building to find the air conditioner and heater.

The system was housed in a small building a little way off from the apartment complex. The lock had already been smashed, and something was running inside. Batman kicked in the door and was hit by the smell of exhaust. Attached to one of the air conditioning units were three generators. The generators didn't seem to be powering anything, but the exhaust ports were connected into the ducts that led into the apartment complex. Their only purpose was to create carbon monoxide. Batman switched off the generators before severing the pipes with a batarang.

The firefighters and paramedics had arrived by the time Batman returned to Tex and her father. They were too busy treating all of the patients to notice that he was there. "The Mad Hatter was feeding the exhaust from generators into the building," he reported. "Probably to keep the other residents quiet."

"He's never done anything on this scale before. Then again, he's never had to kidnap -" His breath hitched in his throat. "He's never taken someone from an apartment before."

"We're going to find Jenny," Batman assured him. "I promise."

"I know. Jenny won't allow him to kill her." His phone rang, and he checked the caller ID. "It's my team. I have to take this."

When he walked away for a moment, Batman turned his attention to Tex. "You've got another problem."

" _I have one problem, and his name is James Carroll,_ " she growled.

"The police are going to ask questions. They'll need to know where you were, and you weren't at work."

Tex removed her helmet and pulled out her braid when the metal strips tucked themselves into her collar. Her face was streaked with tears now. "I went to a movie. It was a midnight premiere. I came home to find people everywhere."

"You'll need a ticket stub."

"I sneaked in." She tugged on her braid as she stared into space. "She said she was being followed. She took pictures. I didn't think it was a big deal because she didn't act like it was. I should have stayed at home."

"Tex, you need to make a decision right now. How are you going to deal with this? Are you going to be Tex? Or are you going to be Jackie?"

She finally looked him straight in the eye and held his gaze for a minute. "I want to be Tex. She gets to beat up bad guys and she gets to hang out with you. But right now, I can't pretend I'm her. I choose Jackie. More people need me to be Jackie right now."

He nodded, accepting her decision. "Then you need to hide your armor. Your family and your private life are about to be exposed to the entire city."

Jackie climbed up the back of the building and into her room. A few minutes later, she reappeared, landing softly in the grass with the help of the grappling cable she had borrowed from Batman. Now she was wearing a pair of jeans, black flats, a green mock turtleneck, and a tan corduroy jacket. She hesitantly handed him a backpack with the armor inside. "Ever since I got it, I have never been more than a few feet away from my armor. Please do not lose it."

"I'll keep it safe."

"Good, because as soon as Jenny's rescued, I'll want it back." Then she turned around and ran back to her father. "Dad, what's going on?" she asked as if she just arrived.

Batman took the backpack under his arm and ran for his Batpod to escape the descending circus. There was work to be done, and Jenny would not wait for anyone.


	29. Chapter Twenty-Eight

The FBI and GCPD raided James Carroll's house in the Palasades as soon as Jenny was reported missing. Agent Harkness led the charge into his mansion, right up until his supervisors caught wind of the entire situation and threw him off the case. Not to be outdone, Agent Jeremy Harkness marched into GCPD headquarters the next morning, right into Commissioner Gordon's office.

"I need to talk to you," he announced, interrupting whatever conversation had been going on.

Gordon told the other detectives that they would finish their discussion later, and sent them away. "Have a seat Agent Harkness," he said.

"I need to know what they found in Carroll's place. Are they any closer to finding my daughter?"

"I cannot tell you anything about the progress of the case. We are doing everything we can to find Jenny, but it will take time. In order for this to work, you need to trust us to do our jobs."

"Commissioner." He grabbed the back of the chair and leaned forward. "My daughter is missing, and I am not allowed to look for her even though I know this man better than anyone else. How is this fair? How do any of you expect me to just sit back and not do my job?"

"There is nothing I can do for you, I'm sorry. I can't go over the FBI's heads."

"I'm not looking for official help. Just tell me if you found _anything_ , even if it's preliminary. Dirt, blood, a shoe, a journal – "

Gordon cut him off. "Agent Harkness, I know you're worried about Jenny. I know how desperate you can get when your family is in the hands of a murderer and there's nothing you can do. I know you'll do absolutely anything, even at the cost of your life or livelihood. But this is not the way to find her. You need to let us do our jobs and go be with your family."

Jeremy let his head fall. "Right. The Batman. I'm sorry, I forgot about that. How can you stand to be in the same city as the man who nearly killed your family? I can barely contain myself."

"We'll catch him. That's the comfort I live by." He sighed. "I can get you in touch with Tex. She can keep you updated," he offered.

"Thank you, but I'm already in touch with her. She's ... uh ... inexperienced."

"Dad!" Jackie, Agent Harkness' other daughter, appeared just outside the door. "What are you doing?"

"Right now, your family needs you more than the police do," Gordon assured him. "We're doing everything we can."

He nodded and shook Gordon's hand. "Thank you Commissioner. Sorry for interrupting your meeting." He left the office, pulling Jackie to his side. She wrapped an arm around his waist with a hand that had nails painted silver. Just like someone else he knew.

As soon as Agent Harkness was gone, the Commissioner closed and locked the door to his office. Then he opened the top drawer of his desk, found the switch hidden inside just behind the lip on top of the drawer, and pulled it. A panel fell open to the drawer's left with a quiet _snick_ , revealing a small cache with a black untraceable cell phone. Gordon turned it on and wrote a text to the only recipient the phone was able to deliver to. _Agent Harkness has been removed from the Mad Hatter case._

* * *

Batman tapped on Jackie's bedroom window a few times before picking the lock and stepping inside the dark room. He had thought the room was empty when he opened the window, but a middle aged woman with short red hair walked inside at just the right time. She instantly spotted him, reached for the bat next to the door and lifted it over her head to swing it at the intruder. Batman raised a hand to brace himself, but Jackie ran in a split second later and grabbed the bat from the woman's hands before she could swing it.

"Sorry Batman," Jackie apologized before turning to the woman. They had a frantic discussion, Jackie signing something defensively with her hands, and her mother responding in kind with a furious expression plastered to her face. After a few minutes of this, the older woman turned to Batman with an expectant expression. "Mom, this is Batman," Jackie grumbled, signing as she spoke. "Batman, this is my mother, Judy." Mrs. Harkness signed something to him, which Jackie translated. "Nice to meet you, Batman." To cut the conversation short, Jackie turned her mother around and sent her out of the room. Then she turned her attention back to her visitor with a face that was bright red. "I wish you would just use the door," she grumbled, grabbing his cape and pulling him into the living room.

"Like mother like daughter," he remarked.

"I have yet to attack you with a bat, but if you sneak up on Mom like that again, there is a distinct possibility that I will."

Agent Jeremy Harkness had taken over the living room, covering it with maps, photos, notes, post-its, push pins, and red string. The television had been swept up and thrown away, leaving a distinctly empty space in the living room that Agent Harkness had been quick to take advantage of. By the looks of things, Jenny's family had cleaned up every sign of violence in the tiny apartment. Even the doors had been replaced by the landlord already.

Batman took a closer look at the map showing places that James Carroll had last been seen and possible locations for his hideout, along with the locations of every victim: where they were taken from, where they lived, and where they were found. "Impressive," he said.

"What are you doing here, Batman?" Jackie's father asked evenly.

"I heard you were taken off the case. If you would like to stay involved, I want to help you." Batman noticed that Jackie was signing everything the two of them said to her mother.

"I don't need your help. You need mine."

"Then tell me what I need to know."

Jeremy turned to his wife and signed something to her. Jackie translated for Batman's sake so he wouldn't feel left out. "Are you sure you want to know all this?"

Judy signed back with determination. "I want to know what's happening to our daughter," she replied with Jackie as her voice. "I need to know what's going to happen to her. What can I expect?"

"Alright," Jeremy began, returning his attention to Batman. "He is called the Mad Hatter because his wants to create the perfect Wonderland, specifically the tea party. He spends the most time trying to find the right Alice. He'll go through three or four girls, often taken from wealthier, upper-class communities. He can spend up to a month turning her into Alice. We think he uses water-boarding, solitary confinement, stress positions, electroconvulsive therapy, and lobotomy. We don't know if he uses ECT to change their personalities or only so he can lobotomize them easier. Sometimes they die from the lobotomy, sometimes they don't respond anymore, and he has to start again. If he's still not happy with his new Alice, he'll abandon her, starving her to death."

At this point, Jackie could barely form the words with her fingers. Judy suddenly shot out of her seat and ran out of the living room. "Just keep going," Jackie begged. "She's going to ask me later."

Jeremy swallowed some guilt at leaving his wife to deal with her emotions alone, and continued. "When he does have an Alice he likes, he finds two men, one much smaller than the other, to play the March Hare and the Dormouse. He doesn't spend as much time on them, just uses ECT and lobotomizes them automatically to make them compliant right off. After they finish their party, he ties them to their chairs, starves them to death or suffocates them, then removes their bodies and leaves them in various locations around town, still dressed up. We have never found a dead Mad Hatter, so we believe he plays the part himself."

Batman nodded, having gathered all the information he needed. "We need to find his hideout as soon as possible."

"Which means we have to go back to James Carroll's place. The police might have missed something." He threw on a brown wool coat that covered his shoulder holster, and grabbed a bag of tools for some minor burglary.

"Are you coming?" Batman asked Jackie.

She shook her head. "I think I should take care of Mom. Besides, Dad will be more help than I will."

* * *

Agent Harkness used a key to cut through the FBI's _Keep out, Crime Scene_ sign that was attached to the back door and the frame, put a bump key into the deadbolt, gave it a tap with a rock, and unlocked the door. "Come on," he said to Batman who followed him inside. "My men won't have left us much to work with."

"I'm not interested in the evidence," Batman said as he gave the house a cursory sweep.

"What are you looking for, then?" He shut the door behind him.

"About ninety years before Walter Blackwell gambled away his fortune and his mansion was repossessed, his great grandparents ran a Speakeasy known as the Bearcat. It was well known to everyone who could pay, but the authorities couldn't ever find it or prove that it existed."

"That would explain why no one could find Carroll. His house staff said he was home, and no one saw him sneak out."

"We should stay on this floor or lower. The Speakeasy was underground."

The two of them took opposite wings on the first floor. While Agent Harkness knocked on all the walls to find a hollow point where there shouldn't be, Batman was studying the carpets with a flashlight. He had done some preliminary research on Blackwell Mansion. The blueprints hadn't been very cooperative in revealing the house's secrets, but carpets could be more than talkative. Specifically, carpets that were made of wool: expensive stuff that lasts for decades. Judging by the lack of respect the youngest Blackwell had for the mansion, he likely had never replaced it.

There were trails through the carpet that stood out when the light hit it at the right angle. The ones down the hallways were particularly deep. Then others peeled away from the main path into rooms. The master bedroom had the heaviest trail, just slightly lighter than the corridor. The office had a well worn path, the smaller rooms with displays and artwork were less traveled by. This wasn't out of the ordinary.

What did surprise him was small, barely visible path into a wall. Well, not into a wall. It ran straight into a massive mahogany grandfather clock. Batman changed the angle of his flashlight to catch the color of the carpet. There were a couple footprints leading up to the clock, left behind after the owner stepped into some gray mud that looked familiar. One of the footprints landed squarely underneath the clock, half in, half out.

"Agent Harkness!" he called. "You should see this!"

The agent followed the sound of Batman's voice into the West wing. "He has eight rooms with tables full of teapots and mismatching chairs. What did you find?"

"Half a footprint."

Agent Harkness studied the print for a moment before coming to the same conclusion Batman had already arrived at. He put his shoulder to the side of the grandfather clock and tried to push it aside, but it wouldn't budge. Then he tried pulling it so it would swing out like a door. That didn't do the trick either. "Maybe there's a switch somewhere."

Batman opened up the glass front of the grandfather clock and pulled on one of the extra levers. The other two showed signs of wear from regular winding. There was a grinding of gears, and the entire clock rose off the ground. It stopped about six inches above their heads, forming the top of a narrow doorway.

"You know, you could have said something," Agent Harkness grumbled.

Batman responded by handing him an extra flashlight and taking the lead down the tunnel. The stairs carved into the rock under the mansion had seen quite a bit of use recently as evidenced by the footprints left in the dust. Agent Harkness found a massive switch on the wall and lifted it. Lights flickered above their heads for a moment before the entire tunnel was lit. The light bulbs were old, made in the 1930s and still hadn't burned out yet due to lack of use.

They followed the tunnel down to a wide open cave. The remnants of the Bearcat Speakeasy filled the entire room. There was a dance floor, dusty tables with chairs stacked on top of them, a bar with an empty cabinet and stools with torn leather upholstery, a stage with torn-down curtains, and art-nouveau prints for absinthe that had faded and torn over time. A great deal of time and effort had gone into this place to make it a habitable, thriving business, which had suddenly shut down and been sealed up when prohibition ended. No one had come back to rescue the Speakeasy.

Batman followed the trail left by the recent footprints. They didn't go anywhere near the dance hall or the bar, choosing instead to give them as wide a berth as possible. Agent Harkness' curiosity got the better of him and he had to take a look at the massive bar. "There's still some whiskey bottles left. Empty, but still." He ran a hand over the counter. "What is all this stuff?"

Without having to look, Batman knew exactly what he was talking about, having to live with it on a day-to-day basis. "In a cave? Either mouse droppings or bat droppings."

Agent Harkness rejoined Batman a second later. "So he knows about the Speakeasy, but he doesn't care about it."

"Probably because he just needed to use the back door." He pointed to a tunnel that was hidden in a corner of the cave. "If there was ever a raid or a fire, they would have to have a way to get out. There's probably another one for getting the alcohol in here."

They followed the tunnel, which led them well away from the mansion and into the quarry grounds. "Now we know how he got out," said Agent Harkness, "but why isn't he using it to keep the girls down there? All he would have to do is install some bars, a better door ..."

"Because the neighbors already knew about it. He bought the house, intending to use it as such, but he realized too late that it just wouldn't work out."

* * *

The next night, Batman was let in by Mrs. Harkness through the living room window. _Nice to meet you_ , he signed to her.

She smiled at the gesture and returned it in kind. Then she left to fetch her husband. He entered the living room with a newspaper in both hands, turned to the local section. "He's starting to collect his players. A dwarf was kidnapped last night, probably to play the Dormouse, and a sex offender has gone missing." Batman gave him a confused look. "Every animal has a breeding season. For hares, it's in the spring. Sometime around March."

He nodded once, understanding what he was getting at. "I brought you these." He handed Agent Harkness a brown envelope.

He set down his newspaper and opened it up, pulling out several photographs. "What are these?"

"Everything I could get from the memory card in Jenny's phone. In a few cases, the card was too damaged to get a good image, and there are a few that were unrecoverable. They might have been deleted."

He raised an eyebrow at him. "You took evidence from the scene of a crime?"

"My equipment's better and I don't have a backlog of several other cases."

"Have you thought about helping the police to upgrade their equipment?"

"Several times."

He noticed something at the bottom of one of the photos. "Jenny knew she was being followed. She was taking pictures of license plates."

"I already ran what numbers I could get from the pictures. I'm still waiting for results, but it's not looking good."

"No, look at the mud." He found a magnifying glass in the junk drawer in the kitchen. "Those are wood chips, kind of like you would find at a playground. Wasn't one of the victims found at a playground?"

Batman shook his head. "That one used gravel."

"Ah. Still, the mud was thrown deliberately on the license plate. It wasn't accidental. We should be looking for this car." He turned to another picture that had the green sedan filling more of the frame, but it was somewhat blurry. "I think it's a Honda." He turned through the rest of the pictures, but that was the best one. The next one, though, held his interest. It was of the sedan's window. The quality of the photo was even worse. Some parts were pixelated, others were just blank. Still, a shadow of a man could still be seen. "Is that Carroll?"

"It looks like Jenny took pictures from the back of the car to the front. Most of the pictures missing were from between the back license plate and the front license plate. I can go back and try to pull something else out of the memory card, but there's not much more to glean from it."

He shook his head. "I'll need it back so it can be used as evidence. I'll call my team and have them put an APB out for this car. If I was him, I definitely would have abandoned it."

Batman crossed his arms and became lost in a thought that just occurred to him. "Agent Harkness, in your opinion, how does the Mad Hatter choose his male victims?"

"In the past, it's just been convenience and based on body type. It was Alice that really mattered."

"But now a dwarf and a sex offender have gone missing. He's picking these characters more carefully now, with a lot more detail in mind. He's upping his game. Why would he do that?"

Agent Harkness looked up, also losing himself in thought for a few moments. "I'll have to get back to you on that."

* * *

"I've never seen so many people go missing at once, even in Gotham," said Batman, pinning another photo to the wall to join several others. "The press know something's going on. They won't accept the silence from the FBI for much longer."

"We don't buckle easily. It's not time for them to know about the Mad Hatter just yet. Right now, we just need them to worry about James Carroll."

"Nothing in his profile suggests that he's capable of kidnapping this many people."

Apart from the March Hare and the Dormouse, seven other people had gone missing, all of them from the middle class. "What does he need all these people for? He's already got enough for the tea party."

Just then, the front door opened and closed as Jackie came inside with a massive white plastic bag over her shoulder. "Hiya!" she chirped.

"Where have you been?" her father asked her suspiciously.

"Around ..." She shifted her eyes nervously.

"Have you been shopping? That bag is from a dress shop. That sells prom dresses." He let his disdain show through his voice.

"Is it?" She looked at the name on the bag: French Collexion. "Huh." Then she carted her haul back to her room before returning to the living room. Standing in front of the collection of photographs with her hands on her hips, she started a conversation to remove suspicion from herself. "So ... people are going missing. What do we have?"

"Four college students, a professor, and two high school seniors," Batman summarized. "All have gone missing within the last twenty-four hours, all were taken off the school grounds, all had a copy of _Alice in Wonderland_ in their possession."

Jackie squinted at one of the photos. "He's got eyes like a lizard," she remarked, pointing at one of the high school students. "Hooded eyes, kind of like Moriarty. What's his name?"

"William Harris," said Batman.

"And that professor has quite the nose," Jackie continued, putting her fingers to her own nose to emphasize the shape. "It looks like ..."

"A hawk?" Batman suggested.

"Sherlock Holmes?" said her father.

She wrinkled her nose at each of the suggestions. "Nuh uh. A Gryphon."

This only made Batman confused, but it gave Agent Harkness an idea. He wrote _Bill the Lizard_ under the lizard faced boy, _The Gryphon_ under the professor, _Duchess' Cook_ under one of the female college students who apparently worked as a line cook at a diner, _The Knave of Hearts_ under one of the students who had been kicked out from a previous university for theft, and _The White Rabbit_ under a student who worked as a bicycle messenger. "New city. New chapter."

Batman finally understood what he was talking about. "It's the court scene when the Knave of Hearts stole the tarts."

Agent Harkness saw the quizzical look his daughter was giving him. "It was my favorite book as a kid. And I've had to read it at least five times over the course of this case." His defense was interrupted by his phone ringing. He eagerly answered it. "Please tell me you have some good news for me." He turned away to have his phone call.

"You already knew that he was using the court scene," Batman told Jackie. "Why did you have to play that game with your father?"

She gave him a sheepish shrug. "I'm Jackie now, the idiot of the family. It's easier if he just arrives at the answer on his own without having to argue over it with me. Plus, this way it doesn't look like I'm getting involved in something dangerous that might kill me."

Batman furrowed his brows, although she couldn't tell due to the cowl. "What are you up to?"

The caller was beginning to annoy Agent Harkness. "Yes, my daughter has met him. Doesn't he have any family?" His face went from angry-annoyed to grim and furious. He hung up without a closing salutation. "They've just found James Carroll."

* * *

Agent Harkness glared at the body on the gurney. The signs of decay were quite evident in the man's shriveled fingers, sunken eyes, and maggot-eaten flesh on the side of his face. A bullet went in like a pinprick between his eyes, and exited like a cannonball out the back of his head. It was an execution. The rate of decay, according to the coroner's report, said that this man had died three days ago, just after Jenny was kidnapped.

He placed a hand on Jackie's shoulder. She had a cold expression etched into her face. "That's James Carroll," she confirmed. The coroner pulled the white sheet back over his face before leaving to give them a moment. "We were wrong."

"We followed the evidence," her father replied. "Everything suggested he was involved."

"Then we read it wrong," she growled.

"Not entirely," said a new voice. Agent Harkness turned to Batman who had just slipped into the room. Jackie continued to ignore him. "This is the man that attacked Audrey Garrison. But it also explains why she was different. He was trying to be the Mad Hatter. He's not the original."

"If he was a copycat, how could he have known about the lobotomies? That was one of the details that wasn't revealed to the press."

"He's not a copycat. He's more of a March Hare."

"An accomplice," Agent Harkness deduced. "He used Carroll to pick the victims, then does the killing himself, keeping himself out of the picture. Carroll fits his profile almost perfectly, he's the face that witnesses see, he has the background in anesthesiology, and he takes all the blame."

"What if he just committed suicide?" Jackie asked. "What if he killed himself so we couldn't ask him where Jenny is?"

"He couldn't have," Batman replied. "There was no blood spatter where he was found, lividity showed that he was moved after he died, and he was washed clean with bleach. He was dumped there after being executed."

"The angle of entry is pointed down, like the shooter stood over them," Agent Harkness continued to explain. "There aren't any powder burns on his skin either. He would have had to hold the gun away from his head and shoot himself right between the eyes when it would be a lot easier to just put it under his chin."

"How does this help us find Jenny?" Jackie snapped.

"We'll figure it out," said her father. "Right now, we're going to find out who he knew and how he could have met the Mad Hatter. It's just going to take time."

"Jenny doesn't have time."

He grabbed her arm and roughly turned her around to face him. "Don't you think I know that? I'm worried about her too, but there's only so much we're capable of doing. Getting angry is not going to help. Do you understand?" he nearly yelled.

"We have other options! You could send me – "

" _No._ That is out of the question." Jackie rolled her eyes and stormed out of the room. Without having to say anything, Agent Harkness preempted Batman's question with, "Don't even ask."

* * *

"Jacqueline."

She didn't jump at his surprise entrance. Instead, she just waved him inside from her seat on the couch in the dark, staring at the intricate web her father had created to follow the evidence. "I think I know why Jenny was mad at me. Not just mad, she was furious. It's only been a few days, but I want her back. And when she's back, I never want her to leave ever again. If she ever comes back," she added woefully.

There was an uncomfortable stretch of silence, which Batman filled. "I know the feeling," he whispered.

"But I just up and left. As soon as I graduated high school, I was gone. I didn't think anything of it because I thought, as long as they know I'm alive, that's enough. I wrote letters, I called, I sent home souvenirs, but it wasn't good enough. I didn't realize they were still recovering from losing me." She paused to blow her nose. "Did you, uh, come here for some reason?"

"Yes." He produced a Ziploc bag of papers and handed them to her. "I thought you might want these."

Jackie opened it and pulled out the first letter and read it slowly, laughing at one part. "This is the one where I got shot in Bangkok and she wanted to know if I was capable of taking a cannonball. For science. I thought I lost these. Where did you find them?"

"Grayskull cave."

Jackie raised an eyebrow. "What were they doing in there?"

"It was one of your old hideouts, wasn't it?"

She was indignant at the thought. "Hey, I like being homeless and all, but I've never been live-in-a-cave homeless. I prefer sleeping on picnic tables or in a tree."

He put two and two together, mentally kicking himself for not doing so earlier. "Then that wasn't your hideout I stumbled on. It was the Mad Hatter's."


	30. Chapter Twenty-Nine

Coming out of anesthesia has never been pleasant. Some people, such as myself, experience profound feelings of emotion when they wake up. For me, it's extreme sadness. I started full on sobbing for a good half hour and was unable to make myself stop even though I knew there was no reason for it. Well, there was, but it was still an artificial depression for me.

When I finally managed to put myself back together, I took stock of my surroundings. There was absolutely no light, which contributed to my previous bout of despair. My heart was beating rapidly in anxiety at losing a sense. In my family, sight is our most depended on sense as we are all capable of living without our ears. The ground wasn't dirt or cement. It was solid, lumpy stone, and my back was sore from being in an odd position for several hours.

I felt the ground with my hands and heard chains rattling. My wrists were shackled to the ground by a long chain. It was about two yards long and attached to the ground by a loop of metal that had been bolted into the rock. My fingers told me the bolts were thick and probably quite long. The shackles were locked to my wrists with two heavy padlocks. No dial so I couldn't figure out the combo, and large enough that I wouldn't be able to smash them off with a rock. Judging by the dried blood on the edges, these were used.

I stood up slowly, giving my blood a chance to get to my head. My head pumped the ceiling when I was still hunched over. Not good. I pulled as far away from the bolt as I could to get a better idea of what the room was shaped like. For half of a circle, my back was bumping into the wall. Then it fell away and even when I was down on my belly and reaching for the wall with my feet, I couldn't feel it. So I was in a small room, probably deep in a cave. So deep that the light didn't reach back here. So deep that no one would hear me scream.

I rolled around on the ground for a bit until I found a comfortable place to sit with my back against the cool and damp wall. The presence of water was a good sign. I could lick it off the cave walls if I had to. As for how to go potty, that I would have to wait for Jervis Tetch to explain to me.

The waiting was already getting to me. My mind rebels at stagnation. Jackie can wait patiently because there isn't much going through head. I have to find something to do. I decided to save counting the links in the chain for later and figure out what I had now. My hair had no elastic, hanging freely all over the place. My shirt was a basic t-shirt; no screen printed designs, no pattern, very thin. My bra was a basic one with no under-wire. Yoga pants, also annoyingly flimsy. No socks, no shoes. One toe was numb from being so cold already.

My ears strained to listen to anything: bats, mice, bugs, spelunkers. There was nothing. Nothing at all for … so long. Hours? Days? I have no idea.

Then I saw light. It was faint, but gave everything a shadow of definition. Over the next few minutes, the light grew until I could actually see colors. With the light came sound. Footsteps, hammer on rock, scraping of metal. Someone was coming.

A hand set a lantern on the floor of my room, then pulled up the rest of a body. It was a man with blond hair and a toothy grin. "Jenny, I'm so glad I found you! Are you alright?"

"James? What are you ..."

"No time." He put a finger to his lips, indicating that I should keep quiet. He ran over to me with a key in his hand. "I'm so sorry about all this. I never wanted this all to happen." He unlocked the shackles on my wrists, dropping them to the ground, and pulled me to my feet. "come on."

With quite a bit of help and guidance from James Carroll, I was led out of the room, down a rock wall, and around a bend. I held onto his hand in a vice grip out of a fear of losing my way. He seemed to be terrified of someone following him, always checking over his shoulder, but he knew the way. Very well. "Were you a part of all this?" I asked quietly.

"Yes."

"But you're getting me out?"

"I can't live in a world where you don't exist." Even when he had no one to impress, he was still an incurable romantic. "And the things that the Mad Hatter does – "

"What exactly do I do, Jim?" Jervis Tetch appeared from around the corner, dressed like a typical rock climber. He did not look pleased.

"I've never asked you for anything. Just ..." He looked pleadingly towards me, "not her."

"Are you quitting Jimmy?" The venom in his voice was getting thicker, and we could both feel it.

He gathered his courage and swallowed his fear. "Yes. I'm not going – "

_Bang!_

The echoing report of Jervis' gun in my hears nearly overpowered the sensation of having James' brains spray all over my face. I almost couldn't comprehend what just happened. Gunshot. The back of James' head missing. Blood all down my shirt. James Carroll dead on the ground for trying to save my life.

I looked down at my hands. They were shaking in shock. When I looked back up, Jervis was in my face, breathing his last meal of garlic infused something into my cheek. "Down here, Alice, you have no allies."

"My name is Jenny Harkness," I hissed.

The cave was silent for five whole seconds. Then he grabbed the hair on the back of my head and dragged me away, kicking and screaming for him to let go, somewhere down the cave's tunnels. He turned right into a cavern with a small subterranean lake. With no warning, he plunged my head into the icy water.

My first instinct was to get my face back into the air. I pushed against the lake bottom with my hands, but the rocks were too slippery and I could gain no traction. My lungs seized up in panic. My first gasp had taken in water instead of air and now my body fought to get rid of it. I held my breath until I saw spots and my ears were ringing, and still I fought. I must breathe!

He pulled my head back up and I inhaled a grateful gallon of oxygen. "What is your name?"

My ego is possibly not great for survival. "Jenny." And back in I dove.

His grip was different this time. He was just pushing my head down, not holding it there. In a desperate bid, I ducked down and slipped out of his hand. My head broke the surface for a second and I gulped in a swallow of air before he wove the fingers of both hands into my hair and forced me under again.

I should not have wasted that one chance of escape. My head swam and pounded, screaming out for oxygen. I was running out of strength to fight against him. Then he pulled me out again. "What is your name?"

"Jenny!"

My lungs and throat burned at the abuse they were undergoing. I could hold my breath for up to a minute under far calmer circumstances. Where was that capability now? The logical part of me said he wouldn't drown me. The survivor in me said that was a lie.

Air. "What is your name?"

Anything but Alice. "Jenny." Water.

The human body can go three weeks without food, three days without water, and three minutes without oxygen. I've tested the food limit before. On accident. It was finals week. I remember ignoring how lightheaded I was getting because the stuff I was remembering was taking up more brainpower than my will to eat. I wasn't about to test the water limit. And now the Mad Hatter was providing me with some valuable information on the air limit. It makes me panic.

Air. "What is your name?"

Too dizzy to speak. Water.

My arms stopped moving. My brain kept shouting at me. My eyes lost focus. The spots took over my vision. Too far. Too far. Oh look … bubbles.

* * *

95\. 95 links in the chain. That makes each link worth 0.81522 inches of the chain assuming that it really is two yards long. I counted the links again. They were becoming my rosary.

I'm good at finding things to think about, even when there are distractions. Distractions such as a growling stomach trying to eat my intestines, a dry throat cracking with thirst that I could barely satiate with the water on the walls, and the white noise that was making my ears bleed.

He left me in the dark again with no sight. Then he turned on some speakers that played only white noise, full blast, to overpower everything else I might have heard. He could have picked rock music. He could have picked bagpipes. He could have played recordings of the screams of his previous victims. He chose white noise, knowing that it was going to drive me nuts.

Much in the same way Chinese Water Torture works, the noise began as an annoyance. I pushed it out of my mind for a while, but it wormed its way back into my head. Again and again, I shoved it out and it burrowed its way back in. It was always there, hissing in my ears, licking at my eyes. Even when I covered my ears, it was still there. Either it was that loud, or my brain was producing it for me. Thank you, brain. Thanks a lot.

Several times I tried to fall asleep, but the noise filled my dreams, waking me up. I would try to block the sound with my hands and close my eyes again, but the noise slipped in there and wouldn't let me go.

" _Alice._ "

I sat straight up. Who was talking to me? It sounded like James. But he's dead. Every one of my senses said no one was there. Maybe I didn't actually hear it. I have been wrong before. Not entirely because James _was_ involved, but I never even suspected anyone like Jervis –

" _Alice._ "

That one I definitely heard. This time it sounded more like the Mad Hatter. It was just under the white noise, easily missed unless you were listening for it, and I happened to catch it. He said it slowly, loving the name, but not the girl it was supposed to be attached to. It was supposed to sneak past my defenses and be the aural variety I was craving.

" _Alice._ "

It slipped under my skin. It smelled like daisies and clover. It tasted like proper English tea and tea cakes. It looked like a curious, innocent, rude little girl. It was spoken by a Cheshire cat grin. It wasn't pretty, but it was interesting. Curious.

" _Alice._ "

I shot straight up, hitting my head on the top of the cave room. That was my voice. _My_ voice. Fury rose up my throat from the boiling rage simmering in my stomach. This man wants to destroy my mind, steal my name, obliterate my hope, and I will fight him on every front, every step of the way. "And you, Mad Hatter, you will not steal my voice!" I shouted. "No trick of technology or voice acting will _ever_ make me hand you control of my mind!"

" _Alice._ "

"I'm Jenny," I snapped at my voice.

" _Alice._ "

"My name is Jenny!" I argued back. With myself. This is childish.

" _Alice._ "

"Jenny! _Jenny!_ _ **Jenny!**_ "

* * *

"What is your name?" the Mad Hatter asked.

I thought over the question carefully. I was named after my aunt, my father's sister. She was a brilliant poet who wrote sonnets about the heartbreak of poppies and the tragedy of a sunrise, and who killed herself when the world got to be too much for her to handle. Dad hoped her intelligence would be passed on to me. I am Jenny, named after my late aunt, Jennifer.

My left leg was beginning to creak and groan under my weight. My outstretched arms were shaking furiously. I held two full teapots, one in each hand, and stood on the one foot. After the first two hours of this, which weren't pleasant to begin with, my muscles began to protest. An hour after that, those same muscles started to have random spasms, but I dared not move positions for fear that I would be electrocuted.

"Tell me your name," the Mad Hatter demanded again.

His voice was muffled a bit by the hood over my head. "My name is Jenny Harkness."

"It's a simple request, Alice. Why must you make this so difficult? You could be at a tea party right now instead of holding the teapots."

The tea was shaking out of the teapots. If it was still hot, it would have scalded my hands. I did not feel like having electricity tear through my blood again. How long have I been down here? A week? Two? Maybe just a day. I don't know. My brain had slowed considerably due to no food and no sleep. Jervis had decided that I had been in the dark long enough and flooded my room with powerful halogen lights and glued headphones to my ears so I would constantly hear white noise, black noise, and the audio recording of _Alice's Adventures in Wonderland_ and _Through the Looking Glass._

All in an effort to turn me into that little girl. Someone I admittedly was very much like. I liked an ordered world and tended to enforce rules on Gotham to make sense of the insanity, which never went over well. I made strange friends like a man who dressed like a bat and a girl who wanted nothing more than to do my hair and make me happy. I am curious. I'm not afraid to ask questions. I am a good student. I don't grow at unusual paces, nor do I shrink, but I will object to authorities when they're being unfair or stupid. Maybe it wasn't so bad to be Alice –

 _No._ I am Sherlock Holmes. I am Irene Adler. I am Jenny Harkness, and my sister is Tex. She is coming for me with Batman and Dad and the whole force of the FBI. They are not coming to rescue a broken me. "My name is Jenny Harkness."

The Mad Hatter flipped a switch on what I can only assume was a car battery. I bent over double as the muscles in my torso contracted at the touch of electricity flooding through my body. Every part of my body tingled and burned. My veins felt like they were going to explode and the ends of the wires felt like they were stabbing my skin. Sheets of lead were swimming under my skin as my body contorted into embarrassing positions.

When the electricity was finally shut off, I realized my hands and arms were sliced open. The teapots had shattered when I fell, and I landed on them. Now I was bleeding freely. How convenient. Maybe now I could slip into blissful unawareness.

But this was not to be so. Jervis stopped all the bleeding with some quick bandages. He disappeared for a few minutes, only to return with a needle piercing my skin. He sewed me back together with a needle and thread like a little patchwork doll, very much unlike Humpty Dumpty.

* * *

He can't make me call myself Alice. But he can make me want to kill myself.

That's what I realized when I was put into solitary again, this time without the lights or the noise. My ego really is going to be the death of me. It has overpowered my need to survive. Reluctantly, I put that part of myself aside and summoned my more basic human desires to help me form a plan. I could lie to the Mad Hatter. I could pretend to be Alice. What I was afraid of, though, was not being able to come back from that.

I counted the links on the chain for the hundredth time. When I came to number 95, I noticed something odd. The lock hadn't been closed all the way. I gave it a tug, and the lock clicked open. I pulled my hand out and realized I could take the shackle off the chain itself. That meant I could pull it out from the loop bolted to the ground. With a few quick yanks, the chain was free of the ground.

My heart did a somersault at the prospect of being free. I gathered up the chain and climbed down the rock wall James had helped me down before. This time, I was blind, weak, and on my own. I more or less slid down the rock face, smashing my toes a couple times, but the pain didn't matter to me anymore.

If I could remember correctly, James took me down to the left. No, the right. Or was it straight ahead? A pinpoint of light dead ahead gave me my answer. Where there was light, there was civilization. Or stars. Or sunlight. I needed one of them. Using my hands as I guide, I followed the walls of the cave towards the light. The floor dipped down, rose up, and curved away from the place I wanted to go, but I found a way to follow it like it was a star. The floor sloped down towards the center where water ran down to form a small stream. I was following it upstream, as that was more likely to be the way out of the cave.

Climbing up the stream was probably the most difficult part as it was freezing, there were more rocks there that cut the soles of my feet, and it was slippery to climb. I would have been grateful for a pair of flip-flops at this point, just to have something protecting the bottom of my feet. But our ancient ancestors walked around barefoot constantly. I was sure I could accomplish the same feat a caveman could. Of course, their feet weren't coddled or abused by high-heels like mine have been.

The stream turned into a small waterfall, and the light was getting stronger. I found something like a staircase that went up the side of the waterfall. My hands were getting cut up and scraped by all the rocks, and the shackles weren't helping either. They had cut into my wrists after rubbing my skin raw. My left wrist wouldn't be doing as good now that it had the entire chain's weight on it. This is how the blood got on it in the first place. A desperate girl trying to pull at the chain, hoping that at some point, it would give, the entire time making her hands more likely to break off first.

I threw my chain up to the landing and pulled myself up with it. Then I stopped short. The light I was following was a lantern. And there was an odd chair here that looked much like a dentist's chair. And a machine I couldn't recognize. And the Mad Hatter was right there waiting for me.

I didn't even have the wherewithal to run at that point. I just fell to my knees. "No."

Jervis casually took the end of the chain and locked it around the base of the chair before returning to his equipment on a desk a few feet away. "Took you long enough. It's been tea time for several days now."

"Why are you doing this?" I half-whispered. "Wonderland isn't your delusion."

"No, it was Jimmy's. He was diagnosed with Schizophrenia years ago, about the same time I was deemed a high-functioning sociopath. Jimmy wanted to go back to Wonderland, but he never had the backbone to get anything done. I did. He asked for my help, and he gave me a place to hide." He approached me with a syringe in hand. Taking my right arm, he cleaned off the area in the crook of my elbow with an alcohol towelette, then slid the needle into my vein. I had to look away from the injection. "It all worked out in the end."

The drug started to work its way into my system, making me feel a bit woozy and just slightly numb. "But you just killed your friend."

"I didn't need him anymore. Besides, it's time to retire, try something new." He unlocked the shackle on my left wrist and lifted me into the chair. "I want to do something other than the same tea party over and over again. There's more to Wonderland than that. And what better way to celebrate the end of an era than a giant F-you to the agent who's been hunting me for the last couple years?" Velcro straps secured my arms to the armrests and my legs to the chair.

"You don't really care about Alice, do you." Tears were leaking out of the corners of my eyes.

"No, I do. I want to see the fruits of my efforts. You have been one of my favorite, but more difficult projects. Mostly because I've been on such a tight schedule." He started attaching some electrodes to my temples. "ECT should never be given without informed consent. So, Electroconvulsive Therapy will induce a small, controlled seizure for about fifteen seconds. Side effects may include confusion, memory loss, retrograde amnesia, and the other kind of amnesia. Anteretrograde, that's the one. Questions?"

I would have had a few, but he placed a tongue guard in my mouth to keep me from biting my tongue, effectively gagging me.

Then he flipped the switch. Pulses of electricity surged through my head, lights danced in my eyes like a rave, and my mind raced down the rabbit hole.

* * *

"Tell me your name."

I turned my head to the man in the strange suit. He looked like the sixth Doctor, except his suit was many shades of blue. He wore a funny hat with a 10/6 card in the brim. It was bigger than his head. "Who are you?" I asked him.

"I am the Hatter, but most people call me Mad. What is your name?"

"Alice," I replied.

He gave me a warm smile. "Alice. I thought so. You look like an Alice. Did you know that it's my un-birthday today?"

I giggled. "It is? It's my un-birthday too!"

He gave me one of his hands to help me to my feet. "Well let's get you dressed up, then. It's tea-time, you know."


	31. Chapter Thirty

~Three Days Ago~

"Absolutely not. We have already had this discussion, and I will not be having it again." Jackie's father slammed a stack of files onto the counter in emphasis.

"But before then we didn't know where he was hiding," she argued. "Now we do."

"And the professionals will handle it."

"They don't know Grayskull cave," Batman interrupted. "It's deep, it hasn't been mapped out fully, and there are multiple tunnels. The Hatter has the advantage down there. As soon as he hears the FBI coming, he could drop Jenny down a chasm or kill any number of the other hostages."

"Why not let the Mad Hatter bring me to her? I'll swallow a tracking device or five, put a few in my clothes, maybe embed some in my skin, and the FBI can follow me down the rabbit hole."

Jackie's father glared at her cheerful presentation of her plan. "How many have you already swallowed?"

"Just the one. And Batman gave me this." She pulled a bobby pin out of her hair that had a red heart charm on the end. "Isn't it perfect? It has a battery life of a week and a half and can be read from 20 miles away. When I need you to come find me, I just have to turn it on."

"Can the signal go through 500 feet of solid rock?" Batman and Jackie exchanged a questionable glance. "The answer's still no. I'm not risking Jenny's life at the expense of your own."

"But I have the both of you watching out for me. I'll be fine!"

"There are far too many risks involved. What if you have an allergic reaction to the drugs the Mad Hatter gives you? What if he never lets you wake up? What if you can't break free and he slits your throat? What if he gives you a lobotomy before you find Jenny? The answer is no." He walked away to the living room to end the conversation.

Jackie bit her lip, trying to hold something back, but it all came out anyway. "Okay, Daddy. I didn't want to do this, but I'm not asking for your permission."

Agent Harkness stopped in his tracks. "Excuse me?"

"I'm asking you if you want to be involved since I figured you would want to know what I was up to. You can either follow the tracking devices that Batman has so kindly provided even though he doesn't like my plan either, or sit at home and play it legal. But I know that the Mad Hatter still needs a Queen of Hearts and if he's targeting our family specifically, he's going to love me. It's the best chance we've got to get Jenny back, and I'm not going to waste it." With that, she grabbed her maroon corduroy jacket from off the back of her chair and stormed out of the apartment.

Her father groaned in defeat. "Don't lose her," he ordered Batman.

Batman handed him a hand-held computer with a screen that showed a dot on a circular field. "I won't."

* * *

~Today~

The courtroom was set up for a trial. The jury was in their box, each with a small chalkboard in their hands. Some had already scribbled down 'Stupid things' along with their own names, lest they forget them before the trial was over. A man dressed as a Gryphon with a beak tied to his face and golden wings attached to his back, was on the front row sitting next to a high school aged boy with hooded lizard eyes, dressed in a pair of overalls. Two of the jurors were labeled as guinea pigs. The rest were just warm bodies to fill seats.

In the witness box was a woman in an apron wearing a chef's hat and holding onto a pepper shaker. In the center of the room was a man, the Knave of Hearts, dressed like a red Robin Hood with hearts sewn to his clothes. He was held down by a pair of shackles bolted to the rock floor. The King of Hearts sat in the stand, dressed in a heavy black robe, a thick white wig, and a crown pressed down uncomfortably on top of that. The Queen of Hearts sat at his right hand, wearing a long red dress with roses sewn onto her waist. She was slumped over with her head between her knees and her red hair spilling over her dress. Her crown sat on a pedestal to her right.

All of the participants in the trial were handcuffed to their seats. Only the King and Queen of Hearts weren't struggling with their bonds. The King sat more or less regally in his high-backed chair, owning his position as if the handcuffs meant nothing to him. The Queen, on the other hand, was incapable of reacting, although her hands were clutching the armrests in a white-knuckle grip. The others were pulling at the handcuffs, hoping to break the bars in the jury box and witness box that they were attached to.

A man in a blue patchwork suit was milling around the room, adjusting costumes, checking handcuffs, applying makeup here and there. Most of his effort went to the Knave of Hearts on the ground, making sure he was dressed exactly right. When there was no more to be done to everyone else, he turned to the dais with the thrones.

"We're almost there," said the man in the hat. "Just one last person to take care of."

The man held a small bottle of smelling salts under the woman's nose. The Queen of Hearts woke with a start, throwing her hair back and nearly hitting her head on the back of her throne. The King reached out to try to touch her arm to steady her as she looked around the room in confusion.

"Wonderful, you're awake!" the Mad Hatter chirped. He set the crown on top of her head and put in a couple pins to keep it there. "Now to bring in the witnesses."

* * *

~ Two Days Ago~

"You're telling," Batman said in her ear. "Quit picking at your dress."

Jackie curled her fingers into fists and placed them on her lap. "And you're distracting."

"Turn to your left."

She turned her shoulders so the rose pinned to her dress with a camera hidden in the petals could get a better look around the crowd of students filing the Student Union. The student government of Gotham City College was throwing a costume party in preparation for Halloween the next week. To fit in, Jackie wore a red prom dress with a white underskirt, roses sewn to the over skirt that was pulled up a bit to expose the petticoats, and a white, light jacket over that. Conveniently, she had bought it only two days ago. Going to the party was her idea since the Mad Hatter had taken his last victims from the school. Wearing the camera and hidden earpiece was Batman's idea.

Oddly enough, she couldn't get him to come to the party himself even though he would have fit in wonderfully. He preferred to sit on the roof with a computer that was hooked up to the security cameras in the building and the camera Jackie was wearing.

"Who am I looking at?"

"Zorro. The one not dancing."

Jackie picked up her tiny purse and heart-topped scepter and crossed the cafeteria floor to get to the dance floor. The closer she got, the more Batman had to turn down the volume on his end of the radio. When she reached Zorro, he pulled back a bit in surprise at being approached by a girl. "Zorro, nice," said Jackie.

"Thanks," he shouted over the noise. "Who are you supposed to be?"

"Queen of Hearts." She gestured with her scepter to the crown on her head. "See? You going to dance?"

Zorro shook his head and pointed at the cast painted black on his leg. She was a bit disappointed, and he left her to find a group of his friends. "It's not him," said Batman.

"I don't think that was him," said Jackie. With only one ear to work with, it wasn't surprising that she was having trouble hearing.

"Go around the dance floor again."

She edged her way slowly around the dancers, giving Batman plenty of time to get a good look at all of them. What he was looking for was a mystery to her, but he was better at picking out strange men in a crowd than she was. Partly because she was a part of the strange crowd. One man in particular caught her eye and she just had to point him out. He was wearing hockey pads spray-painted black, a black ski mask with pointed ears sewn on, and a bat insignia pinned to his chest.

"Not now," he growled. "Look for someone invisible, but not a loner."

Pushing her way around the edge of the room, Jackie turned around a few times so he could get a good look at everyone from every angle. As she turned back around to get a view on the party-goers again, a janitor trying to empty a garbage can bumped into her, spilling a cup of water he was holding in his other hand, all over her dress and arms. She took in a long, sharp breath in surprise.

"You're the Queen of Hearts," he reminded her. "Be mean."

"What is wrong with you?" she shrieked.

"I'm sorry," he sputtered.

"You should be fired for incompetence! I will have your head!" Jackie very nearly hit him with her scepter with her arms flailing around.

"That's enough," Batman directed. "Storm off."

Jackie did so in the direction of the restrooms, trying to wipe off any water as she walked. "I feel like such a jerk-face. If the Mad Hatter didn't see that, I'm not doing it again."

"I'm sure he did."

Jackie pushed open the door to the bathroom and found a sink with a mirror. She pulled out a stack of paper towels and started patting her dress dry. Several girls milled around behind her, coming in and out of the restroom. Some were fixing their makeup, some were adjusting their costumes, some were throwing up in the toilets.

Batman noticed that the video was swaying awfully close to the counter, then quickly over-corrected to stand up straight again. "Jackie, are you alright?" She tried to throw away her paper towels and missed when she leaned too far sideways. "You've been drugged. What did you drink?"

She escaped from the bathroom and headed down the hallway. "I didn't drink anything." She tripped and fell to her knees. While she was getting back up, she sniffed her arm. "DMSO. I think I was roofied."

Dimethyl Sulfoxide. A chemical that is absorbed into skin at a phenomenal rate, often pulling other chemicals with it. He didn't have to get her to drink anything to drug her. "Get out of there, but try to walk like you're not drunk."

"I'll try." By clinging to students and stair rails and students she mistook for stair rails, she made her way downstairs to the student lockers. When she found a free one, she took off her flower and set it in the back. "Locker number 089, code 9999. Thanks for keeping an eye on me." Then she took out her earpiece, put it in her purse, and locked it in the locker with the camera-rose.

Batman waited and watched the doors from his vantage point on the roof. He had lost the elusive janitor almost as soon as Jackie stormed away from him. Several minutes later, he saw Jackie passing through the rows of police and campus security, on her own. They disregarded her as just another drunk sorority girl. As she made her way down the road, a small pick-up truck pulled up in front of her. The driver offered her a ride, and Jackie accepted.

With the help of a batarang, Batman placed a tracer on the truck, certain it wouldn't be left anywhere near the cave. Then he let Jackie go.

* * *

~Today~

"I don't want to do a trial," Jackie complained. "I'm supposed to play croquet today."

"We can play later," the King of Hearts assured her. "Right now, we have to convict the Knave for stealing your tarts."

"Stealing my tarts? They're right there." She nodded at the large table overloaded with strawberry tarts in the center of the room. "I've got plenty of tarts. I want to go play croquet!"

"Look, this trial is going to happen whether you like it or not," the Mad Hatter said. "Now you can either cooperate or I can put you out again." He brandished a syringe full of a sedative.

"You are out of line, Hatter," she replied with a malicious grin. "You act like you're better than me, but you have no idea who I am."

"You listen to me," the Mad Hatter ordered, grabbing her face.

"No you listen to me, Hatter," Jackie snapped, kicking him away in the crotch. "I have been shot, stabbed, drowned, starved, poisoned, bludgeoned, strangled, tortured, burned alive, caught in a bear trap, hit by a truck and none of that could stop me. I have taken on several men eight times your size at the same time _and won._ I could kill the Batman if I chose to. You kidnapped my sister." She stretched out her fingers and shattered the metal encircling her wrists. "And you think _you have the upper hand?_ " Her left hand darted out and latched onto his throat. She stood up, picking him up off the ground with her. " _You. Will. Pay._ "

Jackie threw him across the room into a rock wall, broke the handcuffs off the King of Hearts, picked up the scepter leaning next to her throne, and stalked after him. The King of Hearts leaped out of his throne and ran for the nearest exit, leaving Jackie with the Mad Hatter all to herself with an audience of about thirteen people.

The Mad Hatter scrambled to his feet and aimed a can of pepper spray at the Queen of Hearts' face, but she was having none of that. She knocked it out of his hands with the scepter, pinched his wrist with two fingers and twisted it until it snapped. Then she swung the scepter at his stomach, breaking the cheap wood.

"It was just too good to pass up, wasn't it?" The Hatter threw a rock at her head, but she leaned to her left just in time. "You already got one of Agent Harkness' daughters. Why not try for the second?" He threw a few more rocks, all of which she either dodged or batted away with the broken scepter. "She fits the part so perfectly, doesn't she."

"Well I only get a few chances at a time." He took a stun gun out of his pocket and turned it on. Jackie didn't back off, but she didn't advance as he waved it around like he was wielding a dainty rapier. "Tell me, how is your dear father handling losing both his daughters?"

"Wouldn't you like to know." Her right hand covered the electric prongs, zapping her skin black, but she didn't flinch. The next second, the stun gun was crushed and the Mad Hatter was weaponless. "Thing is, he never got the Jackie back that he lost. He got me instead." She grabbed his coat lapels and pushed him into a wall where she punched him in the jaw three times before she let him slip out of her grasp.

He sputtered for a second before regaining his footing and stumbling backwards. "So he only had one daughter that he cared about losing, and I've had her for an entire week." She rushed him and punched him in the spleen. "Do I sense some Daddy issues?"

"There may be a few, but you don't get to throw them around." Her arms snaked around his neck in a headlock as she cut off his supply of blood and oxygen. "My guess is that you've got some Mommy issues of your own."

" _My sister,_ " he gasped, falling to his knees.

"Oh, who cares who you blame for being sick and twisted. Right now, all you have to look to are me and my fists."

* * *

~One Day Ago~

Last night had been long. Batman had tracked Jackie to Grayskull cave, which confirmed their suspicion of the Mad Hatter's hideout, but he couldn't follow her down until she found Jenny. Until she called for help, there was nothing he could do. Now he just had to wait. The plan was for the FBI to rescue all the hostages, but Batman wanted to be there just in case the Mad Hatter needed a few solid socks to his jaw.

Soon after Jackie disappeared, the DNA results came back on the blood in Jenny's apartment, which Agent Harkness had been given as soon as they were produced. He was still owed several favors by nearly everyone in the FBI and two and a half decades of work made many people loyal to him. The name they got was Jervis Tetch, a patient of Arkham Asylum that had escaped several years ago and was presumed dead. He was being treated for sociopathic tendencies when he became roommates with one James Carroll, a schizophrenic man who was desperate to return to Wonderland. That was where their friendship began. None of this, however, helped him figure out how to help Jenny.

Bruce woke up somewhere around ten a.m., which was early for him. Not much fighting for him the night before made sleep come easier. Alfred was gone to the supermarket for grocery shopping, and with his secretary missing, Bruce didn't feel much like going in to work. Wayne Enterprises could survive without him for a bit out of respect to Jenny, although he wasn't entirely sure if they would be able to survive without her.

He wandered downstairs to the kitchen and after a bit of struggling to find the cereal bowls, poured himself a bowl of Raisin Bran. Alfred would frown at his lack of a decent English breakfast, but sometimes he just needed something simple to make and eat. Pulling out a newspaper to catch up on the happenings of Gotham the old fashioned way, Bruce slowly devoured his bowl of cereal over stories of the missing seventeen people. With no explanation for it, the press was beginning to go with aliens until the police would give them some solid answers.

Twelve jurors, three witnesses, one Alice and one Queen of Hearts. That sounded about right. Only one person was missing: the King of Hearts. For the life of him, Bruce couldn't figure out who the Mad Hatter would pick to play that part.

 _Knock knock knock!_ Someone impatiently knocked and rang the bell on the back door to the kitchen. Bruce looked up to see if Alfred was coming, but then remembered that he was out running errands. He reluctantly left his morning reading and breakfast to open the door for a thin man with mud colored hair, a large box at his feet and a pad of paper with a pen in his hand. "Delivery for Mr. Bruce Wayne," he said.

"I guess that would be me." He took the paper and scribbled his name down. "What's in it?"

"Nothing, actually."

Bruce looked up just in time to see a stun gun stab him in the neck. There was enough time to avoid it, but he made a distinct decision not to. The electricity turned his entire body into jelly right before he collapsed into a soggy heap on the ground.

The last one, the King of Hearts, was Bruce Wayne.

* * *

~Still Today~

Bruce ran out of the 'courtroom' as soon as he was able, leaving Jackie behind to deal with the Mad Hatter. As he raced down the corridors of the rabbit hole, he dropped his crown, his wig, his gavel, but held on to his judge's robe just in case. The Mad Hatter hadn't had the time to take down his markers denoting the paths he needed to take. They were small, phosphorous-tipped stakes driven into the floors. Bruce grabbed a nearby lantern when he saw the light running out in the tunnels.

The rocks and stream of water cut and froze his feet, but he ignored the pain. The Mad Hatter had taken his shoes out of some effort to dehumanize him. Whatever purpose it held, it was effective. Despite being able to push the pain out of his mind, his progress was still slowed.

The markers split into three different paths, none of them certain to lead to Jenny. If the Mad Hatter was as clever as the FBI thought he was, he would have left several fake trails, and possibly no real ones. Bruce closed his eyes and attempted to use his other senses. No discernible breezes, no bats to give him a hint, no smell of fresh air. He had to strain to hear it, but there was something there in the darkness.

Voices were coming from ahead. It sounded like two men screaming to be let free. That was something he could use. He pressed forward into the darkness, fighting it back with just a lantern. With only his ears to count on, he made several twists and turns in the labyrinthine cavern, hoping that he wasn't headed for a trap. Considering that he wasn't expected to get away, it was unlikely the Mad Hatter had planned for his arrival.

Bruce found light coming from a hole in the ceiling, as well as the voices. He threw the lantern up there and pulled himself up. What he found was a long mahogany table that never should have fit through the cavern, all set up for a massive tea party. The table had to have been constructed in the room itself. Tied to three of the chairs was a dwarf, a scrawny man with greasy hair, and Jenny in her blue-and-white cocktail dress, white stockings, black shoes, and a blue ribbon in her straw-straight hair. Her eyes looked dead and she wasn't struggling like the others.

He found a knife on the table and cut the three of them loose, saving Jenny for last. When she was free, she fell forward into her mock-turtle soup, but Bruce caught her before her head could hit the table. For a moment, she met his eyes, but didn't acknowledge his presence.

"Jenny, talk to me," he begged desperately. "Are you hurt?"

Her eyes wandered away, confused. "He says my name is Alice."

His heart fell into his stomach. He ran a hand through her hair a couple times, finally resting it on her cheek. "What has he done to you?"

"Hey, where's the nutjob?" the dwarf demanded.

"The Queen of Hearts is taking care of him. We need to go back to the courtroom." He draped the robes around Jenny and picked her up with her arms wrapped around his neck.

"Why?" the other man asked.

"If you want to find your own way out, be my guest."

Bruce carried Jenny out of the tea party room and down the tunnels back to the room with the Mad Hatter. The March Hare carried the lantern, leading them back the way Bruce had come. He had conveniently left a trail of blood drops from his feet for them to follow. Carrying Jenny was slowing him down, but he doubted that she could even walk on her own at this point. She needed food and sleep soon.

The four of them emerged on the courtroom to find Jackie still rearranging the Mad Hatter's face. He wasn't even capable of fighting back anymore, and Jackie didn't look like she was about to stop anytime soon. Then she went from fearsome fighter to terrified little sister in a matter of seconds like someone had flipped the switch on her personality. "You found her! Is she okay?"

The March Hare and Dormouse dared to go through the Mad Hatter's pockets and take the handcuff keys to unlock the jury and the one witness. With all the extra handcuffs, they made sure Jervis couldn't move an inch. Bruce pushed the thrones off the dais and set Jenny down on it. Jackie ran over to her sister, pulling her into a gentle hug.

"Jenny, are you alright?"

"My name is Alice," she argued, pushing herself weakly away from the Queen of Hearts.

Jackie paled visibly. "No. No, you don't have to pretend anymore. He can't hurt you. I won't let him hurt you."

"My name is Alice. Get away from me." The look in her eyes was pure terror, and the only person it was directed at was Jackie.

Bruce could see Jackie's heart being crushed into a thousand pieces as he felt something similar. "Jenny. No. I'm your little sister."

"My sister's not a monster."

Jackie reeled backwards, so Bruce quickly stepped in. "We need to get her out of here as soon as possible. Is anyone coming to help us?"

She pinched a heart-topped bobby pin in her hair. "The FBI is coming. I'll find the way out so they'll know how to find us. You'll take care of her?"

He nodded. Jackie gathered some coils of rope, tied one to her waist, attached the end to a rock, and started walking out of the cave, leaving a trail behind. Bruce returned to Jenny, gathered her into his arms, and urged her to go to sleep while the rest of them waited.

* * *

~Twelve Hours Ago~

The girl in the large red dress woke up only with great effort. The first thing she did was look around for visitors, and smile when she saw one. "Hi. I'm Jackie Harkness." She held her hand out to the man next to her. A hand that was inexplicably glowing, providing light to the rest of the rock room.

"Bruce Wayne." He returned the gesture, finding it odd that the two of them had never officially met. "Why are your hands glowing?"

She pushed herself up into a sitting position next to Bruce. "That's your first question? Don't you want to know where you are or why you're here or who you're playing?" Question successfully evaded.

How much would Bruce Wayne actually know? Nothing about the Mad Hatter, for starters. "What are you talking about?"

"We are going to be part of the trial from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland." Jackie started listing people off on her fingers. "We've got Bill the Lizard, my favorite character. He looks like a lizard too. There's the Gryphon, this professor with a nose like Sherlock Holmes, the Duchess's Cook, this woman who works at a diner, the White Rabbit played by a bicycle messenger. From the pictures in the paper, he's kind of cute. There's a dwarf playing the Dormouse, and another guy playing the March Hare. Apparently he's a sex offender; shared some intimate pictures of his girlfriend with his friends when they were both 17. Then there are a bunch more people in the jury."

"Where are they all? Have you met them?"

"Nope. We're being kept separate from the 'commoners.'"

"Why?"

"It may have something to do with the fact that I'm the Queen of Hearts, and you're the King. Or maybe there wasn't any room for us. In either case, we're stuck." She pulled on the chains attached to their ankles which were connected to the rock floor by a bolt, to make her point.

"Is there a Mad Hatter?" he asked out of curiosity. "What about Alice?"

Jackie's face grew noticeably hard. "The Mad Hatter's the one that kidnapped us. He already has Alice."

Bruce Wayne finally put two and two together long after Batman already had. "You're Jenny's little sister. How has your family been doing? Are you alright?"

"As soon as I find Jenny, I'll let you know."

"Jenny's here?"

She nodded and turned to him in a hushed voice. "Mr. Wayne, I'm not going to lie to you. We're all in a lot of trouble. This man, the Mad Hatter, is a known serial killer. My dad was in charge of his case, and I think he wants revenge or something. He's going to kill us all if I don't stop him."

"How are you going to do that?"

"I'm going to beat the ever living snot out of him as soon as I know where the others are, but I'm going to need your help. I need you to take care of Jenny. I don't know what he's done to her. I mean I do know, potentially, what he might have done, but I really have no idea. Find her if you have to, and make sure she doesn't get more hurt."

"Of course I will."

"Good. To do that, I need you to cooperate with our lord and master, the Mad Hatter. I've already been more than a little grumpy, and I'm starting to develop an addiction to sedatives. Not deliberately, of course." She ran a hand over the puncture marks in the crook of her arm.

"When does everything go down?"

"I'm sort of playing this by ear." They heard a noise from down the cavern and Jackie turned out the light on her hands only for another faint light to replace it. "Remember that the King of Hearts is agreeable. The Queen is not. If anyone's going to take bullets down here, I will."

The light grew brighter and illuminated a gaunt man with a blue top hat. "Jackie, arm."

She held her arm out to him so he could tie some medical tubing around her bicep and insert a needle into her vein. "Where did you put Jenny?"

"Alice is fine. She's with me. Sweet dreams." He left the room with the lantern, plunging the two of them into darkness.

Jackie slowly collapsed onto Bruce's lap, using his leg as a pillow. "Sorry. Hope you don't mind."

* * *

~Later Today~

It took Jackie more than two hours and several coils of rope to find the way out of the cave. During that time, Jenny slept fitfully. She almost didn't trust her dreams to be just dreams. Every time she woke up, she clung to Bruce even tighter, and he was happy to oblige. Occasionally when she awoke, he fed her a tart, but she couldn't eat more than a couple bites before feeling sick. Then he would urge her to go back to sleep, running his fingers through her hair until she did.

Jenny woke up again with a start, terrified of whatever she had seen. Bruce pulled her back to him to comfort her. "Can you talk to me? What are you dreaming about?"

She frowned. "I can't remember. My head is fuzzy."

"Are they nightmares?"

"No. It's just noise. And I just feel so alone, like I'm being dropped into an oubliette and left to rot. Then I wake up and you're here and I can't go back to that loneliness."

"I'm right here. You're not alone."

"No. Everyone I trust is always taken away from me. There's no one here!" She curled up into a ball, clutching her head.

"But you're not alone. Your family is coming for you, and the entire FBI. Your dad's an FBI agent, remember?"

"Yes, I remember that. He taught me how to lift prints when I was twelve."

"What about your mother? What do you remember about her?"

"She's a nurse. She doesn't like it when I get myself hurt, but she never says anything. I can see it in her eyes. She wants me to stop spying on the neighbors from the trees."

"Why did you spy on them?"

"Because they're there."

"What else do you remember?"

"I have a little sister. Jackie. And you." She turned her head up to meet his eyes. "I know you. Your name is Bruce Wayne."

He smiled at the sound of his own name and that she was remembering some less important things. "Do you remember your name?"

This troubled her, and she had a hard time coming up with a response. "It isn't Alice."

"No, it's not Alice. You're much better than an Alice."

Her brows furrowed and she retreated further into his arms. "Can you just talk? I don't want to know about me anymore."

"Okay." He brushed some hair away from her eyes. "What do you want to know?"

"You know my parents, but I don't know yours."

Not a subject he often broached, but he felt like it was something he could tell Jenny. He ran his fingers through her hair to help her relax. "My dad Thomas was a doctor, not a businessman. When I was little and he was still in medical school, he would read me his medical terminology books so I would go to sleep. He was never CEO at Wayne Enterprises. He chose to work at Gotham General Hospital. He met my mom, Martha Kane, when he was an undergrad. She was his math tutor. He wasn't even taking any math classes. Mom was heir to the Kane Chemicals fortune, and lots of people said Dad married her for the money, but I know he loved her. No Wayne has ever married for money. I know I won't."

Jenny wasn't listening anymore. Her head was nodding into sleep. He kept combing her hair with his fingers, feeling grateful that she was even alive in his arms.

What exactly would they have to deal with? The signs of psychological trauma were making themselves apparent. A touch of Stockholm syndrome, an inability to sleep, nightmares, memory loss. Actually, the memory loss seemed to be more likely a form of retrograde amnesia, something she only would have gotten from ECT. Bruce had to fight to keep his hand from curling into a fist in her hair. Jenny's mind was something special, amazing, phenomenal, and the Mad Hatter had the audacity to think that he had the right to destroy it. He had nearly killed Jenny without actually killing her.

In that moment, Jackie came back into the courtroom missing half her dress and with the FBI in tow. The entire room erupted into applause except for Bruce, Jenny, and Jervis. Among the crowd was not Mr. Harkness as he was still not officially allowed on the case. Jackie cautiously approached Bruce and Jenny. "How is she doing?"

"She's sleeping. I think she's going to be fine. She seems to remember you."

Her face brightened with a smile. "Thank you for staying with her."

"Well thanks for the rescue." He stood up, carrying Jenny in his arms. "I think it's time to go."

"I agree."


	32. Chapter Thirty-One

I woke up in a cold sweat an hour before my alarm went off. For a moment, I panicked, thinking I was back in the cave, but then I recognized the framed cross-stitch rose on the wall and I remembered that Imogen was in the room next to mine. Instead of trying to go back to sleep, I pulled my knees up under my chin and stared at the wall. Two weeks of therapy and drugs and the nightmares still wouldn't go away. I'd have to convince the doctors to give me some sleeping pills in addition to the cocktail they were already prescribing me.

Soon after I got out of the hospital, Imogen had me move into her apartment. It's not like I would have stayed in my place after what happened anyway. Jackie and Dad did all of the moving for me while I watched them, trying to remember when I had bought or accumulated all of this stuff. Imogen has been quite patient with me and the rest of my family. Mom stayed with me for the first week before I sent her home. As for Jackie, she sometimes sleeps on the floor next to my bed. She's keeping the other apartment until the lease is up, which is where she stays most nights.

No use trying to get more sleep. I got out of bed and started getting ready for work. One thing Jervis Tetch did for me was make me appreciate showers a whole lot more. I went to the bathroom to take a quick shower, letting the hot water ease the knots in my muscles I had developed overnight. Then I started some oatmeal on the stove, dried my hair, and went to my room to go get dressed. I was confused as to which door was mine, left or right, but picked the right one at the last second, which also happened to be correct. My navy blue skirt and blazer, a white blouse, and black pumps were already set out for me so I wouldn't have to worry about picking out what I was going to wear.

I worked on a preliminary schedule for Mr. Wayne while I was eating my breakfast. We would have get him caught up after I had been gone for so long. Businesses can rarely be paused for so long. Mrs. Miller had covered for me, but her schedule wasn't as efficient or effective as mine had been. I couldn't blame her, though. The break from work and school had been nice, but I needed to find something to occupy my mind. My homework was already caught up since I had so much downtime at the hospital and at home.

Despite my efforts to keep quiet, Imogen was still roused from sleep. She dragged herself into the kitchen in her pajamas, her hair resembling a haystack. "Nightmares?"

"I've had plenty of sleep. I just need to be awake."

She sat down at the table. "Same dream?"

"It's not really a dream anymore. It's more like this oppressive presence that sits on my chest. Even when I wake up, it's still there."

"Maybe today isn't a good day to go back to work."

"It's Monday. Today's a perfect day to go back to work." I finished off the last bite of my oatmeal, took my bowl to the sink, and went to my room to finish getting ready.

"You know you're over an hour early," Imogen told me as I was brushing my teeth.

"I've got a lot to catch up on."

"I'm worried about you."

"Don't be. Wayne Enterprises is my second home. I'll be fine."

On my way to the office, I bought a coffee, taking a little more time in the tiny shop than I normally would. Mostly because the barista recognized me. "Jenny, you're finally back! I'll have your usual ready in just a second."

"Actually, can you make it a triple?"

"Sure can! Coming right up." I'm not really sure if Becky is chipper because that's just how she is, or if she's sampling too much of the merchandise. Either way, we exchanged a few friendly words, catching up on the latest events in our life. Her children were terrors as always, but she loved them. I had nothing new to report, even though I could tell she was desperate to hear how I was doing in therapy. I paid for my coffee, left her a generous tip, and walked to work. Didn't want to be too early.

I was all alone in the elevator as I was still quite early. It took about thirty to forty-five seconds to get to the top floor, but I swear it took longer. The air was cold like I was stuck in an ice-box, and the ceiling felt much lower than normal. Then the doors dinged and let me out into my office. I made a mental note to take the stairs down.

The office was silent when I got in. This was normal as I was often much earlier than everyone else. What wasn't normal was how much I hated it. The hollowness in the air created a pit of dread in my stomach. I do my best work in silence and solitude. It's not like me to fear it. Jervis Tetch, it's all his fault. He turned one of my strengths into a weakness, one that I can't afford.

I set my stuff on my desk, finished off my coffee sat down, turned on my computer, and started sorting through the mess of Mr. Wayne's appointments. How does someone who comes in so late managed to get this much done? Three meetings today, one was a lunch meeting, and a handful of contracts needed to be signed. I wrote a few emails to a few departments in the building, then went downstairs to Archives to pick up some material Mr. Wayne would need to know.

Archives was a cold, dry place to begin with, but as I plunged into the rows upon rows of filing cabinets, I felt a cold finger trail up my spine, sending shivers all through my body. I found the research and reports I needed, double checking that they were the right ones at least three times. I had this secondary, legitimate fear of handing over the wrong files and having to come back down here. Once I found the right files, I practically ran out of there back to civilization.

When I got back upstairs, taking the stairs this time, the office was coming to life. People were coming in, passing me, and saying my name. "Hi Jenny." "Hey Jenny." "How's it going, Jenny?" I returned their token greetings with one of my own, but my mind barely registered their faces. Every one of them had a job to do anyway, so they couldn't spend time with me. "Good to have you back, Jenny."

"Good to be back."

I started reading through the research, summarizing the summaries for Mr. Wayne to glance at and seem knowledgeable. Research on cancer therapies, experiments on light-based circuitry that uses photons instead of electrons, and VTOL capable aircraft. All incredibly fascinating stuff that I could get lost in for hours and distract me from the pitying glances my coworkers were giving me when they thought I wasn't looking. I wasn't mad at them for their silence. I wouldn't have any idea how to talk to a traumatized me either. If only we could all pretend that nothing ever happened, that I was on vacation for a few weeks.

Right around noon, a green ceramic flowerpot landed on my desk, filled with daisies. "Daisies?"

"I know you don't like flowers at work," said Bruce Wayne, preparing for a backlash, "but I thought, given the circumstances –"

"You got me daisies." My face and mood brightened instantly. "How did you know they're my favorite?"

He took off his coat and set it on the chair in front of my desk. "Well, of all the paintings in my home, you seemed to like the daisies most of all. Then I called Jackie just to make sure."

I laughed at that. "Thank you. I love them."

He gave me a smile. "Glad to have you back."

"Good. You're meeting with the board in five minutes to discuss whether you're going to continue developing Hexocline. It seems to work okay on certain types of pancreatic cancer, does wonders on gout." I handed him the file and my notes. "Then you have lunch with Environmental Energy Solutions."

"Great." He took the file and disappeared into his office. Then I hung up his coat and got back to work.

The last couple of weeks had not been as terrible as they could have been. Starting from the night the two of us were admitted to Gotham General, him for electrical burns and me for … other things, Mr. Wayne always found a reason to stop by and visit. Just to say hello, see how I was doing. It got to the point that I could predict when he would come around, usually around 11:30 just before he went to work. Mom liked him and often found a use for him when she was there. Lots of jars needed opening. Dad didn't care much for him, but respected him for helping me out of the cave. Imogen loved him, but more often than not was at work when he came by. Jackie, as far as I could tell, was avoiding him. Of course, she was avoiding everyone lately, even me.

Right after Mr. Wayne's meeting, the two of us drove to the Criterion restaurant for his meeting. By that, I mean that he drove us in his Lamborghini Aventador instead of having a company driver take us. I did have to raise an eyebrow at that.

"What?" Mr. Wayne said as he opened my door.

"You're showing off, aren't you."

"Who would I be showing off for? It's sports car. It's not going to kill you."

"No, but I've heard about how you drive." I sat down in the cool leather seat and entrusted my life to Mr. Wayne.

The lunch crowd at the Criterion was much thinner than the dinner crowd, but there were still plenty of people. Our party was waiting for us at one of the center tables. Yes, we were twenty minutes late. It bugged me, but it was supposed to throw them off balance a bit. Ms. Pamela Isley seemed to just take it in stride, but the twitch in her eyes and lips said that she wasn't happy about it. "Mr. Wayne, I'm glad you could come. This is my assistant, David Hume." She gestured to a scrawny boy at her side.

He shook the ginger, crimson-lipped woman's perfectly manicured hand. "Nice to meet you, Ms. Isley. Let's get started."

We sat down at the table and ordered lunch from Jackie who happened to be working today. She flashed me a quick smile, but that was the only hint of recognition she gave. I was grateful for it, though. My name had been all over the news and Ms. Isley didn't need to recognize me. I guess that's why Mr. Wayne didn't introduce me either. I ordered something small that I didn't intend to eat.

Ms. Isley's company, Environmental Energy Solutions, or EES, was all about investing in new green technologies and recycling everything. The research Wayne Enterprises had done in photon memory boards intrigued her as it presented an opportunity for the electronics industry to use something other than electricity. "Imagine the possibilities, Mr. Wayne," she exclaimed. "No more toxic electronics poisoning the landfills in China. No more dependance on coal-created electricity. This will revolutionize the digital world."

"I was more concerned with the way it will change computing power, but I can see why you might be interested."

"Interested? Mr. Wayne, I am excited. The world has no idea how much damage their computers and cellphones and iPads are doing to the earth every time they throw one away to get the latest model."

I may have hidden my smartphone under the table at that remark. Mr. Wayne barely stifled a yawn at her never-ending environmentalist agenda pushing. "You have to understand, all of this is still in the development stages. We're still doing the research on these South American beetles."

"The beetles have shells with a crystalline structure that traps certain photons which give them their brilliant colors," I stepped in to explain. "We're still working on creating our own structures to do the same thing."

"Perhaps we can pool our resources," Ms. Isley continued. "This is a project EES would be greatly interested in advancing. It's fascinating that it takes some creature from the earth to give us the technology to save it."

"Fascinating indeed," Mr. Wayne murmured.

Ms. Isley's assistant whispered something in her ear. "I apologize, but something has come up, and I must be on my way." She and Mr. Wayne stood to shake hands. "I hope we can continue our conversation at another time."

"We'll be in touch," I assured her as I wrote down David's number in a notebook.

Even though they were gone, Mr. Wayne had no intention of leaving just yet. "What did you think of them?"

"She's honest, and earnest," I replied candidly. "Perhaps not the best combination."

"Oh? How so?" I got the impression that he already knew the answer, but was hoping I had come to the same conclusion.

"EES has been under investigation several times in the past on suspicion of funding environmental terrorist organizations, but all charges were dropped or settled out of court. In the end, it seems like they were just allegations, nothing substantial. But the fact that they keep getting investigated makes me think otherwise."

"It would make a businessman nervous."

"The spin their PR went with was, 'Big Government just hates Green Companies.' Their ad campaign makes them out to be victims, and it's resonated with the public. It could be something Wayne Enterprises could afford to ride the coattails of."

"Do you buy it?"

"After meeting Ms. Isley, I would not be surprised if the officials' suspicions are valid."

"Okay, then. We'll play this one by ear." He noticed me moving the food around on my plate. "Are you alright? You haven't eaten a thing."

I shrugged, but avoided his eyes. "Not that hungry."

"You haven't been sleeping either." He turned his chair to me when I gave him a look of disbelief. "Six cups of coffee is hard not to notice."

My fork clattered onto my plate and I sat back in my chair. "It has become difficult to sleep without sleeping pills," I sighed.

"Nightmares again? I know you don't like talking about them, but I'm worried about you." He touched my arm for a second, but I pulled my hand away into my lap.

"I can do my job," I snapped. "I am perfectly capable –"

"Oh, I know. Gotham could be in flames and you would have everything under control. The point is, I don't think you're as well as you think you are."

"I'm fine. I've had plenty of time to recover. I'll catch a cab back to the office." I threw my napkin onto the table, grabbed my briefcase, and started to walk out of the restaurant.

That's when I passed Jackie taking dishes off one of the tables. I don't know if it was the sight of Jackie in her uniform or the location of the table or the bowl of soup Jackie was clearing away or a combination of the three, but memories came pouring in of the terrible date with James. I could feel every painful, awkward moment, the soup hitting my dress. Then I could smell all those flowers, and gunpowder. Brains and blood on my face. Rocks. Cold, hard rocks. Then water, everywhere, suffocating and crushing my chest.

"Jenny!" Bruce's insistent voice pulled me out of the confines of my memories. It could also have been him grabbing me by my arms and shaking me out of my stupor.

I could barely breathe and my head was feeling light. My vision was narrow and my feet were unsteady as blood pounded so hard through my veins. My chest felt like it was going to burst. The physical symptoms of a panic attack were overwhelming, but the terror was far more omnipresent. Terror of being alone, fear of being locked in a dark room, horror at being left in silence.

"Employee washroom in the back." Jackie's voice broke through my thoughts for a moment before my briefcase was taken out of my hand.

I was vaguely aware of Bruce leading my feet into the back of the restaurant, through a noisy kitchen, and into a white tiled bathroom. He had me sit down in the corner, then wet a handkerchief in the sink to cool down my flushed face. I tried to curl into a fetal position, bending my knees up to my chin and using my hands to pull my head down.

"It's going to be okay, Jenny." Bruce pulled my hands away and just held them tight. "I'm right here."

"I know. I just ..." Can't form sentences anymore.

Bruce sat on the ground and held me in his arms while I tried my best to slow down my heartbeat and hyperventilating. Breathe in. Breathe out. I don't know how long the two of us sat there. Long enough that we probably missed his next meeting. I'm sure he was just fine with that. The only thing that kept me sane in that room was knowing that he was right there. Right there, he's always right there. He hasn't left me alone since I got out of that cave.

I took in a shaky breath. "I hate this. I hate feeling so weak." Bruce wisely didn't respond. "I never know when these panic attacks are going to hit, and I hate them. I'm not supposed to be scared."

"Everyone gets scared, Jenny. Even me."

"I've helped Dad take down serial killers and art thieves just fine before."

"You planned on them, and you dad was right behind you."

"Why can't I just pretend this didn't happen?" I moaned. "It worked just fine for Jackie."

Bruce shook his head. "You can't. It's a part of you now. You can either let Jervis Tetch keep controlling you, or you can own your fear. Knowing you, Tetch doesn't stand a chance."

I ran my hands through my hair, shaking it out, and Bruce absentmindedly straightened it. "Why are you so nice to me, Bruce?"

"Because I'm a nice guy?"

"I mean it. You keep checking up on me and spending time with me when you don't have to, and for the first time in my life, it hasn't been annoying me that someone won't leave me alone. In fact, I'm glad that it's you."

We were quiet for a few more moments as what I said sunk in for both of us. "Do you want to see more of me?"

I sucked in a tight breath. To be honest, the thought of starting a relationship with anyone, even him, made my fists tighten again. I didn't want to say no because I did like it when we were just friends instead of co-workers, but I didn't know what to say.

Fortunately Mr. Wayne, or Bruce, I suppose, noticed my tension. "You only have to commit to a couple hours every now and again. And I fully understand if you want to leave things as they are."

"Why don't we start with lunch," I said abruptly, "on a day that isn't today."

"I think that can be arranged," he said with a relieved chuckle. "I have to warn you, it can be dangerous to date a celebrity," he said.

"More than the Mad Hatter?"

"The tabloids will tear you apart."

"Already got that when Jackie went missing."

"I forgot about that. So … how's tomorrow looking?"

"Like I've got plenty of time for Cafe Rio."

He took my hand in his, our finger interlacing perfectly. It just felt so safe. "Then it's a date."


	33. Chapter Thirty-Two

"I don't think I've ever been on a proper picnic before," Jenny said, crossing her legs under her as she sat on a red-and-white checkered blanket. She looked quite relaxed in jeans, a white blouse, and a loose blue wrap around her arms. Her blonde wavy hair was getting tangled in the growing breeze.

Bruce set down a basket and pulled out two paper plates and some plastic cutlery. He was dressed a bit more formally in a gray argyle sweater and khaki pants. "Come to think of it, neither have I."

"The concept is simple. I don't think you can screw it up." She retrieved two chicken salad sandwiches from the basket and place them on the plates while Bruce got out a bottle of apple juice.

"Never underestimate the ingenuity of idiots," he teased.

"You're not an idiot Bruce. Why do you do that?"

"Do what?"

"Put down your own intelligence. Is it a crime to be rich _and_ smart?"

He sat down next to Jenny, leaning back on his elbows and stretching out his long legs. "I don't know. There's this Bruce Wayne that everyone expects me to be. It's just easier to play along since they're going to assume I'm a spoiled, brainless playboy anyway." What he did not say was that it was a disguise just as much as Jenny's collection of costumes were. It was an image perfected over years of practice. At first, it was so people wouldn't see how much he was hurting after his parents' murder. Then it became useful when he had to deflect suspicion from himself.

"Are we talking about the press or your associates?"

"Everyone but you and Alfred, essentially. Don't tell me you never get blonde jokes."

"I've actually amassed quite the collection, but most people who tell me one learn not to tell a second." She took a bite of her sandwich. "I just have never seen the point in being someone I'm not."

"Says the girl with a closet full of disguises," he retorted.

"Okay. There's no point if it's not going to serve a purpose. I can play a ditzy blonde when I want to get information out of someone, but I'm not going to pretend I'm a fool in my day-to-day life. That's why I can't see why you would do it."

The sky was starting to darken, and not just because of the sunset. The clouds were starting to thicken at an alarming rate. "It just gets tiring to correct people that I'm more than likely never going to see again. It's not like I'm hurting anyone, anyway."

"Fair enough." The two of them lapsed into silence as they ate dinner over watching the sun set in the sky. The gray clouds took on rosy purple hues as it dipped lower in the sky.

"Anything new going on in your life?"

"One week panic attack free," she smiled.

"That's great! What about the nightmares? Are those going away too?"

"Not so much. My therapist is trying to wean me off my sleeping pills. Thing is, I can't remember what I'm dreaming about. At this point, I would kill her to get her to renew my prescription. Imogen's annoyed at me because she was just getting used to sleeping again."

"How bad are they?"

She took moment to answer. "Bad enough to wake up Imogen, so I guess I'm screaming. I know I'm grinding my teeth too, so I got a mouth guard thing. I feel bad for her. She's trying to be a good friend and supportive, but I know her patience is really being taxed."

"If you ever need to, you know all you have to do is call me."

"I'm already waking up one person. I don't need to wake you up too."

He waved off her concern. "I'll be awake anyway. Insomniac, remember?"

She rolled her eyes. "Your sleep schedule is wonky is the problem."

"I'm working on resetting it," he assured her. "It's not as easy as it sounds."

"I know. I had a brief period in my freshman year when I slept for ninety minutes a day."

"How did you do that?"

"Strategically placed power naps. It didn't work out with my work schedule."

Thunder rumbled in the distance, and Bruce examined the sky more carefully. "We may have picked a bad day for a picnic. Those clouds are making me nervous."

Jenny frowned at them. "They don't look that bad."

A flash of lightning proved her wrong. Rain started to drizzle lightly on their picnic. "You were saying?"

"Oh, shut up," she growled as they jumped to their feet. Bruce and Jenny scrambled to throw everything into the basket before the rain got worse. By the time they had pulled the blanket over their heads and started running back to the house, it was coming down in buckets.

Alfred stood at the back door with an umbrella in hand, patiently waiting for the two of them to come back. They were giggling as they raced back to the patio. "There are towels in the mudroom," he said when they arrived, "and the kitchen table is available for you to finish your picnic."

"Thanks, Alfred," said Bruce, handing him the basket.

"Actually, I've got to head home," Jenny said, looking at the time. "I've got a massive test tomorrow and I haven't even started to study."

"Really?" Bruce looked somewhat heartbroken.

"I'm sorry. Dinner was wonderful. We should have another picnic when the weather's better."

"Count on it." He walked her to the front door where they shared a quick kiss in parting. Then Alfred gave her an umbrella and she ran to car. Bruce watched her back up and drive away into the pouring rain. When she was out of sight, he closed the door and headed to the Batcave.

* * *

Bruce turned off his phone before pulling on his Kevlar-enforced gloves. It had been a while since he had dated an early-bird. It could be problematic if their schedules didn't sync up enough, but at least she wouldn't be wondering what he did every night. Still, knowing Jenny's keen eye for things she wasn't supposed to see, he would have to be even more careful. Dating ditzy women had its advantages, but they could be incredibly boring.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Alfred had said with a stern eye. He hadn't needed an announcement to know Bruce had found someone new. "You and Star only broke up a few weeks ago. The press will think she's just a rebound."

"Jenny's not a rebound," Bruce argued. "She's smart and she's sharp – "

"And she knows your schedule inside and out. You can't pretend to be seeing someone else every night."

"She still has evening classes."

"You're grasping at straws. She's going to figure out what you're doing with your nights. She's clever enough she'll probably find the Batcave on her own."

"Alfred, I'm smart too. I'll take care of this. Don't worry."

One week in, and Alfred's fears had been unfounded. As far as he could tell, Jenny didn't suspect a thing, although she was trying her hardest to not be annoyed when he strolled into work several hours late. For now, though, he had other concerns. With one of his untraceable phones, he dialed Tex. From the background noise, it sounded like she was in a bit of a fight judging by how out of breath she was.

" _Make it fast_ ," Tex snapped.

"Are you busy?" he asked.

" _Not if you count beating the daylights out of a couple would-be rapists as being busy._ " A man groaned in pain as he hit the ground, then there was the distinct sound of flesh meeting a boot just before another man fell.

"Can you meet me at Dock 27 in fifteen minutes?"

She caught her breath. " _Yeah, I'm done here. See you in a bit._ "

Batman cut off the transmission and started up the Batpod. After turning it to face the mouth of the cave, he gunned the engine and leaped out into the cold, rainy November night. As he sped around the outskirts of Gotham at several miles over the speed limit, icy raindrops hit his face and forced themselves in through the edges of his cowl and down his neck. The results made him much colder, but all the more determined to get to the docks faster.

By the time he made it there, he was effectively soaked. Water had found its way into every opening in his armor. He found some shelter for his Batpod, then reluctantly made his way to a nearby roof to scope out the harbor with a pair of high-powered binoculars. A small ship had come in well after hours, and a group of about twenty men were unloading it. Most of the cargo was in metal barrels which they carted off with hand-trucks and into a couple semi-trucks.

Some of the cargo, however, were just trays of plants covered by cardboard lids. The men were carefully carrying them over to a white windowless van where they were stacked up. A woman in a green trench coat with long red hair was holding an umbrella over her head as she lovingly watered each flat with a plastic watering can.

Tex pulled up to the docks and found a nearby overhang to hide under. It just so happened to be connected to the building Batman was currently on the roof of. He tossed a batarang in her direction to get her attention. She stuck her steel-covered head out into the rain to see him waving her up. After making a show of sighing in despair, she extended her titanium nails and started climbing up the side of the building like a cat. Once she reached the top, she crawled over the edge of the roof and stayed crouched down as she joined him on the west end. The rain hit her helmet and echoed off with an endless flurry of _ping!_ s. " _You would pick the coldest night in November for a stakeout,_ " she grumbled.

"I'm not the only one."

" _What do we have?_ "

He gestured to the scene at the docks. "Leaves of Three. They're an environmental group with a shady track record. Among other things, they've taken credit for burning down a ski lodge, attempting to blow up an oil refinery, and murdering a politician who refused to support a bill towards a wildlife preserve. Ironically, they do more damage to the environment trying to get their message across than their targets ever did."

" _Environmental Terrorists in Gotham? What's their beef?_ "

"I haven't quite figured that out. They're smuggling in plants, probably endangered ones, along with an alarming supply of dangerous chemicals." He pointed to the woman in the trench coat. "That woman there, watering the plants, is their leader Poison Ivy. Whatever she has planned for Gotham, it can't be good."

" _So, do we beat them up and chase them out of town?_ " He gave her an odd look and she hung her head sheepishly. " _Sorry. Been on a Western binge. What's the plan, Blondie?_ "

"Hand them over to the police. Like usual. You distract them from the front, I'll disable the vehicles, make sure they can't run off and pick up the ones you miss." He focused on one man in a plastic poncho that slipped carrying a tray of plants. The lid fell off, revealing a plant made of thick green vines with white trumpet shaped flowers. The woman watering the plants suddenly snapped and went off on the man, berating him for his stupidity and clumsiness while tried to pick the flat back up and put it in the van. "Do you recognize those plants?"

He offered her the binoculars, but she politely declined. Her helmet did a good enough job. " _They look familiar, but I can't place them._ "

"Treat them as toxic until we know better. Ready?"

She shivered, then adjusted something inside the wrist of her sleeve. The water hitting her suit started steaming off. " _Ready._ "

Batman fought a twinge of jealousy for the temperature regulation in her suit, and shot a grappling cable at a crane overshadowing the dock in question. "On my mark, come in from the south." Tex saluted him as the cable carried him away. The water weighed down his cape, dragging him down when he tried to climb on top of the crane.

Tex had a slightly more subtle entrance. The criminals of Gotham had come to learn to look up, not at ground level which was exactly where she was coming from. Her head turned from side to side, surveying the scene through the crate she was hiding behind. Then she held up a hand, showing two fingers, then three. She counted twenty-three men.

Batman took out five specially designed batarangs from his belt. These were slightly bigger than his usual ones, black, and held a bit of thermite. He threw them at the trucks' engines, two for each of the semis and one for the white van. When they hit, they let off a bang and started melting straight through the engines and into the ground.

Tex took this as his signal, and ran in. She launched herself into one of the gunmen protecting the shipment, knocking him into two others and prompting a confused flurry of gunfire. Most of the bullets seemed to miss her as she darted around their guns. Tex grabbed one man's shotgun, aimed it towards the tires of a semi while kicking behind her to knock another man's handgun out, then threw him over her back, breaking his gun in the process. Bullets glanced off the top of her head as she spun around and punched the next shooter in his kidneys.

While Tex was handling the gunfire, Batman climbed down into the crane's control compartment. The cold made it difficult to hold on, but the extra grip in his gloves kept him alive. Once inside, Batman turned on the machine and raised the load it had been carrying. A massive crate was pulled into the air, then carried over the heads of the smugglers before being deposited in the path leading to the dock's exit. The smugglers were now sealed in by two walls, the water, and Tex.

Despite her skill, Tex was starting to get overwhelmed by gunmen. They were slowly forming a circle around her. Instead of letting them run away, Poison Ivy was having a few of the smugglers pull the plants out of the van and set them in a trailer while the others found firearms with which to take care of Tex. Batman climbed out of the crane and rappelled down to join the fight.

"It's just Batman's kid sister," one of the shooters encouraged. "She's no big deal."

Batman descended on the circle, taking out one of the smugglers on his way down. He immediately moved on to the next gun, twisting it out of the man's hand and knocking a few teeth out of his grin.

" _Oh, look_ ," Tex said sweetly, kicking a man in the stomach. " _It's her big brother._ "

Batman dodged the bullets aimed haphazardly at him, his cape taking several of the shots, while Tex parroted his movements and took down anyone trying to approach him from behind. He snapped the wrist of a hand holding a revolver, swept the feet out from a man with a tommy gun (oldschool, he noted), and punched the lights out of a man who tried to hit him over the head with a wrench.

Tex did not have the benefit of a massive cape to disguise her figure, so she had to dance around the guns. Her moves were a bit more light and fluid than her partner's, but with kicks that knocked guns out of slippery hands and darting hands that crushed the barrels, she was keeping up. She threw an elbow into a throat on her right, ground someone's foot into the asphalt with her heel, and kneed another man in the groin, bringing them all down within a matter of seconds.

Out of the corner of his eye, Batman saw Poison Ivy trying to get away. She had a secondary vehicle hidden in the shadows. Her men had hooked up the trailer to her pickup and she was currently closing and locking up the back so her plants didn't fall out. The number of gunmen still left standing had diminished significantly. "Tex, she's running," said Batman.

She nodded as she brought a knee up into one man's skull. " _Go get her, boss._ "

He threw a man over his shoulder and started running for the truck. Poison Ivy saw him coming, so she jumped inside the truck and started the engine. Batman readied a couple thermite batarangs, but she managed to put the truck and gear and drive directly towards him. He managed to leap into air and grab hold of the hood, but dropped his batarangs in the process. The truck swerved back and forth. It would have been difficult to hold on in the first place, but the rain was making it nearly impossible. Holding on with one hand, he took a set of brass knuckles off his belt and began to punch the windshield. The first blow cracked the glass, and Poison Ivy jerked the truck to the left in surprise. On the second blow, Batman's fist made it through.

The woman panicked, grabbed a small crossbow sitting on the passenger seat, and pointed it out the window. Batman didn't even see the dart when it was fired, just felt a burning in his shoulder, forcing him to let go of the hood of the truck and tumble off onto the wet asphalt. He rolled out of the way of the truck's tires before it sped away from the scene of the crime.

The burning spread from his shoulder to the rest of his torso before fading into a sense of numbness. He tried moving his arm, but found that his shoulder was nearly completely paralyzed. The rest of his body was starting to follow suit.

" _Batman, are you okay?_ " Tex ran to his side and turned him over onto his back. The first thing she noticed was a small dart stuck in his shoulder, which she pulled out and examined.

"It's a paralytic toxin," he said through clenched teeth.

" _It looks like your armor took most of the dose._ " She heard sirens start blaring half a mile down the road. " _That's our cue to leave_." Using whatever muscle movement he had left, Batman tried to stand while Tex lifted him with an arm over her shoulders. Then, borrowing his grappling gun, she shot a cable at a nearby roof. Batman wrapped his arms around her shoulders and she carried to two of them up and over the roof.

Tex laid Batman down under a solar panel to shield him from the rain, propping his head up on the ledge, then crouched down low enough that only her eyes were seen over the edge of the roof. From the growing sound of sirens and yelling, he could almost tell what was happening down below. "What's going on?"

" _The Cavalry's arrived, and most everyone is getting arrested._ _I've got an anti-toxin back home, but I can't leave you to go get it._ "

"Because of the police?"

She turned down the volume on her helmet and laid down in the gravel next to him. He could feel the heat emanating from her suit. " _Whatever she poisoned you with is a muscle relaxant. If it's anything like the toxin from a blue-ringed octopus which I am mildly familiar with, it could paralyze your lungs and you'll stop breathing. Then I'll have to give you mouth-to-mouth and CPR until it wears off. I'm kind of hoping that it won't get that far._ "

He took a mental stock of what parts of his body he could move and which places were numb. "It seems to have stopped spreading. I'll just wait for it to wear off. You can go home."

Tex looked back over the roof to check on how the arrests were going. A HASMAT team had moved in and was starting to inspect and confiscate the drums of chemicals. " _I've got time. So … what do you talk about on a stakeout?_ "

"You don't," he growled. "Don't make unnecessary noise while the police are still around."

" _The way I see it ..._ " She picked up his left arm and let it drop to prove a point. " _There's not a whole lot you can do to stop me._ "

"I _had_ a new radio I _was_ going to give you," he threatened.

In response, Tex shut her mouth with a _hmph!_ Then she turned back to watch the Leaves of Three be taken away.

* * *

A few hours into the arrest and investigation, the police were starting to thin out and leave. " _Weird thing happened_ ," Tex murmured. " _My sister, that terrifying woman who hit you in the head, has a boyfriend._ "

"Who?" Batman said innocuously, testing the strength of his fist. The feeling had returned to his right hand and he could lift it through sheer force of will.

" _I can't say. Jenny doesn't want me talking about it._ "

"He must be high profile, then. And probably her boss."

She glared at him for a moment. " _For the record, I never said his name._ "

"Are you worried?"

" _Nope. I'm happy for her. She's been loads happier, like no one annoys her anymore, like the Hatter never kidnapped her, like I never went missing. I've been trying to make her that happy, but this guy comes in and sweeps her off her feet. I wish I knew him better. I mean, we did get locked up in a cave together, but I was unconscious for most of that. Then I've never managed to be around when he's visiting._ "

"What do you think about him?"

" _He's a really nice guy. Not sure if there's a bad bone in his body. He was brave enough to stay calm and help me out back in the cave. Plus apparently he's loaded. Who knew?_ "

"You didn't know that Bruce Wayne was a billionaire?" Batman said incredulously.

She shrugged. " _Can't say I care that much about local celebrities. I move every couple months, so there's never been a point. He's human, just like the rest of us._ "

"Don't you have anyone?"

Tex took a deep breath and sighed. " _You are the only friend I've had in three and a half years, and you don't even like me. Did you know that?_ "

"You know plenty of people," he scoffed. Then he hastily added, "And we're not friends."

She ignored him. " _You are the only partner I have ever had who hasn't tried to kill me, which I appreciate more than you know. I like people. I like to make friends. I don't push them away or anything. If everything was right and proper, the two of us would be acquaintances. You'd probably have saved me once, I would have said, 'Thanks,' and we would have been on our merry ways._ "

"What went wrong?"

" _I disappeared for two weeks. Stuff happened. I lost an ear. I got new hands. I'm pretty sure that I should have died, but I didn't. That's what I'm worried about. I think I'm living on stolen time and everyone I meet can feel there's something wrong with me._ "

"It's not that." He gathered enough strength to push himself up into a sitting position. "There are millions of people who have escaped death, and they deserve to be alive as much as the next person."

Tex pulled her knees up to her chest. " _Do you feel it too?_ " she asked quietly.

He nodded. "We were created from chaos to help bring the world to order. Our tools and methods are not normal. We have seen things that are not human. Of course we're outcasts."

" _And if we reform Gotham? What then? Will there be a place for us?_ "

"You already know the answer to that. It's the reason you're forced to move on from place to place. You do what good you can, and then you're not needed or wanted. With our methods, we can't live in the havens we build. I knew that right from the beginning."

" _Then why do you do this?_ "

"Because when I needed someone, there was no one. It's not going to happen again."


	34. Chapter Thirty-Three

The Mad Hatter's trial came much faster than I had anticipated. Two things prompted the speed of this trial. One, it kept on making national headlines and two, election season. What better way to sway the polls? Since Bruce and I were both witnesses, he offered to drive me over to the courthouse. Alfred dropped us off only a few minutes before the trial was scheduled to begin. On our way in, we ran into one of the other primary witnesses.

Jackie stood outside the courthouse staring at the buildings on the opposite side of the street. She wore her work uniform: black skirt, white blouse, and black boots, along with a red and black jacket; not exactly court attire. Her phone spun in her fingers nervously.

"It's been a while, stranger," I said, approaching her from her left. Bruce followed me close behind.

She barely reacted in surprise. "Hm? Oh, I guess so." She finally pulled her gaze away from the skyline and glanced at Bruce and me. "Sorry. I've been busy."

"Mom and Dad here yet?"

"Yeah, they're inside." Her phone buzzed and she turned her attention to a long and interesting text.

"You've met Bruce, haven't you?"

He extended his hand. "It's good to see ..." But Jackie picked that moment to turn around and leave for the courthouse without looking up from the small screen in her hands. "I guess not."

"Something's eating her. She's not normally like this."

"Well, shall we?" He offered me his arm and we walked confidently into the courtroom.

Inside the courtroom, Jackie and my parents had taken the first row behind the prosecutors. The others from Jervis' court scene had also arrived, taking up the rest of the seats behind them. There was one blonde girl I recognized from the papers only. Audrey Garrison sat in the back row with a bandage over her left eye and a solemn expression on her face. Not sure what she was doing here since her kidnapper was already dead. Jervis Tetch had already been brought in wearing an orange jumpsuit and handcuffs, and sat with his lawyers at the defense table. Also notable was the line of staples in his head and the cast covering nearly his entire right arm. Weeks ago, he would have looked significantly worse.

I took a seat next to Mom who hugged me as we sat down. Her face was wet with tears. _What's wrong?_ I signed.

She shook her head and smiled. _Nothing. I just want you to be done with all this._

_Soon, Mom. Very soon._

"All rise," said the Bailiff. "Judge McAllister presiding." We stood as a middle aged Asian woman in a black robe entered the courtroom and sat at her podium.

I was the first witness called, of course. Alice was supposed to be the star of this whole operation. I had written and memorized exactly what I wanted to tell the jury so I wouldn't have to think much about what I spoke aloud. I even scripted answers to possible questions. But when it came time for the defense to cross-question me, they declined. Jervis Tetch wouldn't even look at me the entire time. I most certainly looked at him. Why shouldn't I stare at the man who made my life a living hell? What did surprise me, though, was who they called to be their next witness, even before my father's expert testimony.

"The defense calls Jacqueline Harkness to the stand."

She stood and calmly passed all of us to reach the witness stand where the bailiff swore her in. Like we expected, the defense pressed her about her activities before, during, and after my kidnapping. Like I expected, she kept her answers deliberately short, technically true and well away from anything incriminating. But then I could see Tetch's lawyer was reaching for something specific out of her.

"Where did you get your equipment to set the trap for Jervis Tetch?" the thin-faced man asked.

I exchanged a look with Jackie. I didn't want her to admit in open court that she was affiliated with a vigilante, but where else could she have gotten the high-tech, expensive equipment she used to free us? She had the same line of reasoning, and went for the easiest answer. "Um, that would be Batman."

A shocked murmur went through the courtroom audience. "How did you come in contact with the Batman?"

"He heard what happened to Jenny and wanted to investigate. That's when I volunteered to be the next victim."

"So when you were allegedly kidnapped by my client, what was it that you intended to do?"

She shrugged. "Beat him to a bloody pulp until I got my sister back."

"Ms. Harkness, are you aware that during your and your sister's captivity, Batman's partner, the vigilante known as Tex, went missing?" That was the question that made me glance over at Jervis. He was leaning forward with a villainous smile on his face. He wasn't even trying to deny that he had kidnapped us.

"I was not," Jackie answered evenly.

"It seems like quite the coincidence. Isn't it odd that he would work personally with you instead of your father, the lead FBI Agent on the Mad Hatter case?"

"I can't speak to my father's involvement. I know he didn't like Batman."

"It's almost as if the Batman knew you personally."

I leaned forward and poked the prosecutor in the back. He jumped up immediately. "Objection; relevance. Also, not a question."

"Sustained," said the judge.

"Apologies," said the defense lawyer. "Ms. Harkness, are you Tex?"

Her face paled a fraction of a shade, but she covered that up by a bout of laughter. "I plead the fifth," she said, still giggling. At the same time, I heard a small gasp in the back of the audience. I looked behind me and saw the little blonde girl had a look of ... recognition?

"No further questions, your honor." With that, the defense attorney sat down and Jackie was allowed to return to her seat. Jervis Tetch's eyes followed her back. He knew. Judging by Jackie's hard exterior, she knew he knew as well.

* * *

"So," Dad sighed. We had gathered just down the hall from the courtroom where they had set us free until further notice. "Impressions?"

"Tetch knows he'll be convicted on the kidnapping charges," I said. "I think he's looking for a technicality through Jackie. He may even press charges for battery."

"I deal with it if he does," Jackie said flatly. She was hanging back and barely a part of our circle.

"What else do you have?" Dad asked. He always did this to us after an interrogation or the closing of a case that we happened to witness.

"The DA's office has some crooked people working for them," I volunteered. "Our lawyer hardly said a thing and barely even pressed me for grisly details. He made me out to be not-that-emotionally-or-psychologically-damaged."

"He didn't even call what Tetch did to you torture," said Dad. He waffled back and forth between treating this like any other case and being furious that someone would hurt me. Today, he chose to go with the former option. "I presume that this evidence will be brought up in our absence, however."

"Probably by Tetch himself," Jackie muttered.

"Other impressions? Mr. Wayne? Anything to add?"

Bruce's head jumped up in surprise at being included. "Oh, um, I thought it was weird to bring in the whole Tex thing. Didn't you say you learned how to fight from your dad?" he asked Jackie.

"I learned from a lot of places." Again, technically the truth.

"None of which were technically me." Dad passed her a sidelong glance. Nope. Still didn't approve of her nightly activities.

Bruce cleared his throat hesitantly. "It's getting late. How about dinner? I know a great place close by."

"That sounds like a great idea," said Dad. "Text us the directions, and we'll meet you there." Then he took Mom's arm in his and the two of them left ahead of us. Dad must have had some errand to run, which left us with Jackie, who was glancing at her phone again.

"Expecting a call?" I asked her.

"An old friend's in town," she explained bitterly. Not a good friend, then. "Not to be a third wheel or anything, but can I catch a ride with the two of you?"

"Absolutely," Bruce agreed, perhaps too enthusiastically. "I'll have Alfred bring the limo around front."

We left the courthouse, preparing for the mass of reporters ready for any details on the Mad Hatter trial. Our instructions had been clear: do not talk about anything from the trial. In fact, it would be best if we said nothing at all. There would be a press conference held by the police to answer the reporters' questions anyway. Bruce pushed open the doors and we walked out into the mess of people.

Jackie stopped in her tracks, analyzing the scene on the courthouse steps. It looked like a typical press conference with the DA and the Police Commissioner patting themselves on the back while reporters threatened to swarm them with their cameras, voice recorders, and notebooks. But Jackie saw something else that I wasn't trained to see. She looked up to the rooftops again. "I'll catch up with you later," she said with an uneasy tinge.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"Nothing. I just left something back in the courthouse." Then she smiled, turned around, and ran away from us.

Bruce tugged my arm gently to get me moving again. "Let's get going. The sooner we're out of sight, the better."

"Okay." Jackie was setting me on edge, but there were appearances to maintain, and a show to put on for Gotham. This would, after all, be our subtle way of saying we were perfectly sane and undamaged from our courtroom visit. With my arm looped through his, we hit the crowd of cameras.

Flashbulbs popped in our faces, reporters hurled questions at us as they shoved microphones in front of our lips to catch the trace of an unintentional statement. They nearly suffocated me, but Bruce handled them like a pro, using his body to create a path for me to the waiting limo. The questions that I caught were at first about the trial, if I thought that the Mad Hatter would see justice, but then they turned to Bruce and I. Are we dating? How long have we been together? How did we meet? Bruce's instructions had been to just let him do the talking. I was fine with that because I had no idea what sort of coy answer would keep them off our backs.

I managed to catch a glimpse of the press conference over the shoulders of the paparazzi. Commissioner Gordon was addressing concerns about the Mad Hatter's arrest or something or other. I saw a streak of red and black dash up the stairs of the courthouse and push past the reporters. "Is that Tex?" I said.

Before the two people who heard me could turn around, the echoing report of a gunshot burst in the plaza. Suddenly, all the reporters ducked and scattered for cover. Bruce reflexively pulled me down, shielding me with his body, but I just had to see. The reporters had cleared enough for me to spot Tex standing in front of the Commissioner. No, the Commissioner was holding her up. Then he lowered her to the ground before taking out his own gun. "Jenny, come on!" Bruce shouted in my ear as he pulled me along.

I was more than willing to get into the car with bulletproof windows, and even started running, but then my cell phone rang with a text message. Despite the chaos surrounding us, I pulled it out and read it.

_Urgent: Agent Texas suffering Cardiac Arrest_

_Medical Assistance Required Immediately_

No. _No._ _No._ Not now. Please, not now. "I have to go." I tore myself away from Bruce, which was surprisingly difficult considering how strong he was. I pushed aside a man in a black wool coat and a photographer in a windbreaker so I could run to Tex.

Bruce wasn't about to let me go so easily. "What are you doing?" he demanded as he ran after me.

No time to explain. No time to say that I would explain later. I wasn't even sure that I would be able to explain later. It only took a split second for everything to go terribly, horribly wrong.

Another shot echoed across the plaza, and everyone hit the ground again. Bruce and I ducked too out of instinct, but I couldn't stop moving. Bent over and stiff bodies made it harder to push through. Not sure what that particular bullet hit. As far as I could tell, no one was bleeding. "Jenny, come back here!" Bruce yelled as I got even further away from him.

I pushed policemen and officers away. They had other things to take care of besides a panicked girl running towards the safety of the courthouse. Specifically, a sniper that was still firing. Not sure what they thought their little pea-shooters could do against a rifleman on a rooftop several hundred feet away. At the very least, they looked like they were taking control of the situation. A couple TV cameras were still running, with their operators holding onto them as the cameras were worth more than their lives. Besides, they were capturing the best footage of their careers.

Completely out of breath, I landed on the step with Commissioner Gordon and Tex lying limp beside him. "Get out of here!" Gordon ordered. "Take cover!"

"Tex needs an AED!" I shouted over the din.

"It's no good. Her helmet doesn't come off." One of his officers was just about to give a set of pliers a try in an attempt to peel off the layers of metal.

Tex's life was in my hands now. She could either die with her secret, or live without it. It wasn't a difficult decision. I hit the button on her neck that retracted her helmet. Metal ribbons peeled back and hid in her collar, revealing Jackie's pale face and blue lips. Then I unzipped her jacket so I could get to her chest and listen for her heartbeat. There was none.

Shock crossed Gordon's face, but the situation at hand required quick and deliberate action. He knelt at her side and started performing chest compressions. A second later, Bruce showed up at my side. "Jenny, what's — oh God."

Paramedics from the fire station around the corner arrived, but they weren't allowed onto the plaza to try to find out who was hurt. The police were getting the rest of the public away from the open areas, and Jackie wasn't responding to the CPR. Everything happened all at once and I could barely think of what I had to do. Chest compressions? Mouth to mouth? Call Dad? My ears were ringing, my breath was coming up short, and my heart was starting to race when another shot hit the stonework above our heads and sprinkled dust on our heads.

"I've got it from here," Gordon said. "I'm taking her inside."

"We're getting out of here," Bruce insisted. I couldn't really protest as he just picked me up and carried me away. It was almost as if I was a paper doll in his arms. He darted nimbly through the crowd, keeping us down so we wouldn't be targets for stray bullets. We got to the limo just as it pulled up to the curb. Bruce practically threw me inside before jumping in himself and ordering Alfred to drive fast. The car shot down the street and a thousand miles away from Tex fighting for her life.

* * *

"No shooter has been found, but the police have said that there was evidence of a sniper nest in the Howell building across the street," said a beautiful black woman, reporting live from the Courthouse. Alfred handed me a mug of tea as I continued to watch the broadcast. The report turned to the footage of Tex being heroic, helpfully played in slow motion. The Commissioner was standing at the podium, answering a few questions from reporters, when Tex suddenly ran into the frame. She stepped in front of Gordon, looked up, then reeled back as something hit her directly in the chest. The camera was good enough that we could see the bullet hit her, then bounce off as she recoiled. They had even managed to capture some of the screams from the audience.

"We believe that the force of the bullet stopped her heart," said one of the on-site paramedics taking questions from the reporter. "We were able to help her, and get her heart going again. She'll be out of the hospital in no time."

"Thank you," said the reporter. "What is phenomenal is what happened right before that. It seemed that the police couldn't get Tex's armor to open up to provide the medical help. Seconds later, another woman appeared on the scene and removed her helmet so the paramedics could save her. Then she disappeared as fast as she got there." They showed some poorer footage of me running into the crowd and saving Jackie.

"Have the police confirmed the identity of Tex or this woman?" the anchor at the news station, Mike Engel, asked.

"The police are hesitant to confirm anything at this point. This picture of Tex was captured by Gotham City Chronicle's Victoria Vale and has been circulating like wildfire on Twitter." A photo took over the screen of Jackie's face looking distressingly pale, with an air mask over her nose and mouth. "After examining previous footage taken from the Mad Hatter trial, we would be surprised if it was anyone other than Jacqueline Harkness."

I shut off the TV. "Ever heard of Journalism ethics? Why don't you just unmask a vigilante and show pictures of Tex nearly dead all over television before the police have even told her _parents_!" I dropped into the couch with a huff. "This is infuriating. I owe you an explanation, Bruce."

He hadn't said much on the ride over to his place. Mostly, he just glared out the window or at the wall with his arms crossed while I told my parents to just go straight home to New York, stay there and watch the news. I knew that the press would want to talk to me because I had essentially unmasked Tex, so Bruce offered to make his home a sanctuary for a few hours. "Not necessarily, but I would appreciate one," he said.

I took a sip of tea to help calm my nerves. They needed it. "Tex's armor is protected by biometrics. Only I, she, or approved medical personnel can open it. It's a security measure to protect her from people who might want to torture her. I get texts from her armor if she's close to dying. In this case, it was a cardiac arrest caused by the force of a bullet."

"So you've known your sister was Tex this entire time?" he translated. His voice was even, but not cold. I could hear notes of sympathy in it, but his face didn't betray any hint of emotion.

"Yes. She came home with that armor, and she left home fully intending to help other people. I don't think she ever intended to create Tex, but it happened and she ran with it. Very few people outside of our family knew, and usually they were very high ranking officials. Except for Star. That was an accident."

This surprised him. "Star knew? Why didn't she say anything?"

"Because I asked her not to. That, and she was in New York. I'm sorry I didn't tell you all of this earlier."

"Look, Jenny, I understand. This was your sister's project, not yours. I respect the fact that you honored her wishes. What I'm worried about, though, are the repercussions. What about Tex's enemies? Everyone she's ever pissed off is going to come after your family to get to her."

I shook my head. "I'm not worried about that. You saw what she did to the Mad Hatter. If Jackie has a conflict with someone, it's between the two of them. They have a very clear understanding that family and friends are off-limits, or she gets even. Doesn't matter if she's not around or dead. She has methods and contacts in high places that will utterly destroy them. I'll be fine. What it all comes down to is Batman."

The crease between his eyes deepened. "His enemies don't play by the same rules, do they."

"He messes with a higher caliber of criminal. What's more likely to happen is they'll go after her to get to him. Right now … jail's probably the safest place for her."

"You think they're going to arrest her? But she hasn't done anything."

"She's aided and abetted a known fugitive. She's assaulted countless numbers of criminals. She's a vigilante. As soon as she's out of the hospital, she's going straight to jail. _Maybe_ they'll let her post bail. _Maybe_ it will be something I can pay. The point is that she's the best lead the police have on the Batman, and she doesn't even know how to contact him. If he's an idiot, which I'm pretty sure he's not, he'll try to rescue her and it will be a trap. If he's smart, he'll never talk to her again, never see her again, never interact with her again. We have to wait to see what he's going to do before we take the next step."

"Which is?"

"Batten down the hatches, because all of Hell is coming out to play."


	35. Chapter Thirty-Four

"Hey, Tex!" The guard knocked on her cell door to wake her up. "Bail's been posted.

Jackie didn't move from her rather uncomfortable bed. "That's hilarious, Leroy. What idiot has $5 million lying around?"

"That would be me," said Bruce Wayne.

She shot up out of bed, her tangled red hair flying around her face. Her eyes had dark circles and her body looked frail under her orange jumpsuit. "Mr. Wayne. What are you doing here?"

"Bailing you out. What does it look like?"

"Why?" she asked critically.

"Does it matter?" he chuckled.

"Yes. If you're bailing me out as a favor to Jenny, then you don't really understand the scope of my situation. If you're doing it just because you can, go away."

Bruce turned to the guard. "Could you give us a few minutes?"

"You've got five," he replied. Then the old guard with nicotine stains on his clubbed fingers left the two alone. As Jackie was being kept in solitary confinement with no other prisoners around in her section, they were more alone than they should have been.

"Do you remember the first time we met?" Bruce asked once he was in the clear. "It was on my front lawn when you were saving Audrey Garrison. Before that, I had always pictured you as some kind of action hero, beating up the bad guys and jumping off of burning buildings and stuff. That night was the first time I realized you weren't doing any of this for fun, and you weren't just an insane Batman obsessed fan."

"That last part's still up for debate," she muttered, leaning against the bars.

"The point is, you care about the people of Gotham, and I don't think you belong in jail for that."

Jackie wrapped her fingers around the bars of her cell door and pulled herself closer. "That's nice of you to say, but you forget that I'm dangerous too."

"Compared to the Batman, you're a saint."

"I've been working with him. We're practically partners."

"I don't care about dangerous, Jackie. You saved Commissioner Gordon's life. You have no idea how much that means to me, do you." She shook her head. "I met him when I was eight, right after my parents were murdered in front of me. Officer Gordon was the only one who really cared about what I was going through. Gotham needs people like you to keep kids from going home at night without their parents." He finished his sentence in a whisper.

Jackie suddenly couldn't meet his gaze. "You're bailing me out so I can keep being Tex."

"Is it selfish of me to ask you to?"

"A little. But I'll do it. _Leroy!_ " she shouted obnoxiously down the hall. The guard's bald head poked in through the door at the end. "Hi. I'm ready to go."

Leroy approached her cell with the keys. "Thought your lawyer said not to accept any bail."

She stepped out of the cell once it was unlocked. "He did. I'm ignoring him."

Bruce waited by the door to the parking lot as Jackie got dressed and collected her personal effects. Ten minutes later, she was escorted out wearing a plain white t-shirt and jeans provided by the jail, her own black boots, and her red and black jacket. Just before she was allowed to leave, a tracking device for home arrests was attached to her left ankle. She was a surprisingly good sport about the whole thing Once it was working, she threw on the jacket and joined Bruce. "Is that part of the Tex suit?" he asked, a bit surprised.

"Yes it is," she replied with a grin.

"They let you keep it?"

"My lawyer is very persuasive," was her cryptic answer.

Curiosity, once unleashed, is hard to stop. "How does your helmet thing fit inside?" He pushed open the door and held it open for Jackie.

"Magic technology. I have no idea. I'm just glad it does." She stopped in her tracks when she noticed which car they were approaching. "Is that … the Lamborghini Aventador?" A smile spread across her face.

"Would you like a ride home?"

"Only if you're offering. And can we stop at the Criterion? I kind of hid the other half of my armor there."

"Sure. I own that one, right?" She rolled her eyes at him as the two of them slid into the car. He started up the car which had a beautifully quiet engine, and pulled out of the parking lot at a speed that would make Batman jealous. "How have you been doing?" he asked, trying to alleviate the silence. "Jenny didn't seem surprised that you didn't call."

"I didn't get to call home."

"Doesn't everybody get one phone call?"

"It's a privilege, not a right. They thought I would call Batman and warn him to stay away. Not that he wouldn't have seen the news. Jail was boring. If I wasn't sleeping, I was being questioned. If I wasn't being questioned, I was talking to my legal counsel."

"If you need a good lawyer, I would be willing to hire one."

"Oh, he's not court appointed. He's an old friend of mine, and so far he's gotten about twelve of my charges dropped."

"Dare I ask how many there are?"

She shrugged. "149, last I counted. I have a feeling most of them are bogus to keep me in custody."

"That doesn't seem legal or ethical," he frowned.

"It's not about me, Mr. Wayne. It's Batman. It's always about Batman."

He clenched his jaw momentarily while Jackie was lost in thought, looking out the window. He could tell there was a lot she was hiding, possibly for his benefit. There was also a level of anger she was hiding behind a layer of apathy. While she didn't want anyone to worry about her, she was clearly hurt. Jackie absentmindedly rubbed her sternum, where a massive bruise had more than likely formed, and winced in pain. If it hurt so much, why did she touch it? To remember that she was hurt, or to check if she was still injured?

"So," she said, coming back from her thoughts. "You're dating my sister."

He nodded once. "That I am."

"You must be smarter than you look. She can't stand stupid people. Not that you look dumb or anything," she hastily corrected.

"She seems to think so."

"Good. She tends to get frustrated with people when they don't understand concepts as quickly as she does, and she'll take little jabs at their intelligence. She's getting better at not doing that, but if she starts it up again, just tell her to knock it off. It's almost impossible to hurt her feelings."

"I will keep that in mind."

"I also feel that I should warn you that if you break her heart, I will break your face."

"You don't solve all your problems with violence, do you?"

"A surprisingly large number of them, actually. Kind of why I became Tex."

That kept the two of them quiet for the rest of the drive to the restaurant. Jackie had him pull into the back lot where the employees parked and shipments came in. Bruce parked across two parking stalls, then they got out of the car. Jackie gave the car a caressing pat before they went inside.

The kitchen suddenly went silent when the door closed, and all the cooks and waiters stopped to look at her. She gave them a quick wave. "Hi guys."

A rotund man nearly six feet tall and dressed in a white chef's coat pushed his way through the crowd. "What are you doing here, Jackie?" he demanded. "You were fired three days ago."

"I'm sorry Mr. Parker," she replied quietly. "My phone was taken away from me. I never got my messages."

"Hang on a second," Bruce interrupted. "There's no need to fire her –"

Jackie put up a hand to stop him. "Mr. Wayne, don't. It's fine. I'll just get my things and go." One of the bus boys was ordered to escort her to the locker room. It only took her a few minutes to collect her meager belongings. In the interim, Bruce shared a scowling match with the head chef. Despite not being the owner, the chef acted like the restaurant belonged to him and Jackie had disgraced it. Bruce could practically smell the contempt emanating from him. Jackie reappeared with a backpack thrown over her shoulders and her lips in a thin line. "I guess this is it, then," she said, addressing her former coworkers. "It was lovely working with you all. I'm going to miss you." She waited for a reaction from someone, anyone, but everyone remained frozen in states of nervousness, anger, and fear. "Okay. Goodbye." Then she awkwardly turned and left. Bruce followed her after shooting one last stink-eye at Mr. Parker.

Jackie was walking much slower back to the Lamborghini. "Are you alright?" Bruce asked.

She nodded, but kept her head down. "Just a job." Her voice was tight with emotion.

He decided not to press the matter. "Home, then?"

She nodded and rubbed away a few leaked tears from her face. "Yeah. Home."

They drove in silence for a long time. Even the thrill of riding in a Lamborghini wasn't enough to stir Jackie from her despondency. After a few minutes of driving on the freeway, Jackie finally broke down in a series of silent, but body wracking sobs. Bruce had a feeling it had less to do with the humiliation of being fired from a job she loved, but with the fact that none of her coworkers, who she probably thought of as friends, would look her in the eye. Apart from Jenny and Imogen, they were the only people she really talked to. What she told Batman wasn't wrong; she has no friends.

"I'm really sorry, Jackie," Bruce told her when she started to calm down. "I can help you find a new job."

She shook her head. No one would hire her at this point, anyway.

When he dropped her off at Jenny's place, she had dried her tears, put some color back into her cheeks, and had a small smile back. They parted ways with the unspoken agreement to never mention what just happened.

* * *

Tex returned to the streets that night. Batman was surprised at how fast she had come back. He spied her standing vigil atop the Prewitt building. He watched her from the roof of the Triad Tower as she scanned the rooftops with a pair of binoculars. Then she put a finger to her left ear as if she was listening to an earpiece, and he frowned.

"She's a fake." Tex's voice broke the silence, distorted by a radio speaker. The voice had come from his left by his feet. Batman poked around the roof for a bit before picking up a small black walkie-talkie from a planter. "On Justice Hall, right behind you, there's another one."

He turned around and found a second Jackie lookalike sitting on the edge of the dome. "Yours?" he radioed back.

"Gordon's. He could only afford the two. I think they're British assassins or something."

He couldn't restrain a chuckle. "He has to at least try to catch me. Where are you?" She didn't answer. "These radios have about a five hundred foot range. I can find you." He started searching the rooftops and nearby windows for the real Tex with a pair of high powered binoculars.

"You shouldn't try. They put an ankle monitor on me."

"My priority is Gordon. I need to know who tried to kill him. What do you know?"

"The sniper goes by Deadshot. He's a mercenary with an obscenely high price and one rule: If you pay him, he will deliver. I've seen his work before; he doesn't miss."

"Except for the Commissioner."

Batman finally caught sight of Tex. She was pacing nervously back and forth in a darkened apartment on the fifteenth floor of a building almost a block away. "You're not listening. He doesn't miss. I've seen him shoot the stem off an apple sitting on a man's head a thousand feet away on the top floor of a building while Deadshot was in the London Eye. And that was on a bet. He hit me directly in the heart. That's one of the only ways I can be killed."

"How does he know that?"

It took her a moment to answer. "It's complicated. So if he was aiming at the Commissioner and he decided to shoot me instead, what does that tell you?"

"That shooting you served the same purpose as shooting Gordon. If he was trying to kill Gordon, he would have. He had two more shots to finish the job, but Gordon wasn't touched. He's trying to draw me out."

"You need to be careful."

"When am I not?"

She looked out the window, but down at the ground instead of towards him. Something she saw disturbed her enough that she abandoned the radio on the windowsill and ran out of the apartment. That was the end of that conversation. On the ground, he noticed a nondescript car had just pulled into the street next to the apartment building, and two people had just gotten out. Judging by their walk and the bulges in their clothes where their guns were holstered, these were undercover cops.

Nothing more could be done in this location. He fired a grappling cable at a building in a direction away from Tex's impostors and took off. Jackie's deliberate distance had sent him a clear message: it's dangerous to work together; go away.

Batman found the sniper's nest across the street from the courthouse. The police had already combed through it carefully, leaving their tape up when they were done. The room had been abandoned long before the sniper ever arrived. It was cleared of any and all accoutrements, and a healthy coating of dust had settled on everything. In the corner was a pile of candy and granola bar wrappers, signs of someone staying in one place for hours on end without leaving. He approached the window from the side and pulled aside the curtains just a bit. The window was still propped open, letting a breeze flow through the ratted cloth. On the street, he saw a small red flag attached to a speed limit sign that acted as a wind gauge. Pulling out a small magnifying lens, he studied the windowsill. There were two grooves in the dust where a sniper rifle's tripod would have been set up. From here, the shooter would have had a distinctly clear line of sight onto the press conference.

From the little he had learned from Jackie, this site felt wrong. Any half-decently trained rifleman would have been able to make the shot. Anyone with a grudge and a reason to shoot a DA, really. On second examination, Batman found the grooves had been scratched into the wood itself. More importantly, there was a thin layer of dust in the exposed wood, too much for a sniper to have set up three days ago. This was the wrong nest.

He left the building and took the spot where Gordon had been standing when Tex took the bullet for him. With his binoculars, he scanned the rooftops for a possible sniper nest. Problem was, the Howell building was taller than the ones behind it for half a mile or so. The only structure high enough to accommodate Deadshot's line of fire was the train lines. The bridge wasn't designed for anyone to be able to climb it without being run off by the train.

The 11:20 train raced across the gap between the buildings, and Batman caught a flash of steel in one of the windows. That would do it for Deadshot. Batman flew into the recesses of the courthouse's ceiling via a grappling cable just as a bullet tore through the fabric next to his shoulder. If he hadn't moved as quickly as he did, he would have a gaping hole in that joint. He took refuge behind the pillars and waited for the lightrail to pass.

The train's next stop would be about a minute and a half away, which gave him a short time to get out of the vicinity. He jumped back down to the street, surprising a couple passing by, found his Batpod hiding the shadows at the side of the building, and took off in the opposite direction of the train. It was bad enough to have the cops renew their interest in tracking him down. Now he had to deal with a supremely competent assassin as well.

"Robbery in progress at Kane Chemicals," Batman caught a woman saying over the police scanner. "All officers in the area, respond. Suspects are considered armed and dangerous. Be aware, Tex is involved."

Kane Chemicals. He was not unfamiliar with the company, his mother having been an heiress to their fortune. If the police were following Tex, she would be putting herself in an unfamiliar fight. Batman turned the Batpod towards the chemical plant.

Three blocks before reaching the building, Batman was forced to take to the air. The police presence was starting to get too thick. Gliding through the forest of buildings was complicated by the fact that the police had brought in a helicopter, but for now, they didn't seem to be after him. Even so, he kept to the shadows and approached the building from the back, landing on an upper level of windows looking down into the plant.

Tex had gotten there several minutes ago and had managed to put herself in the thick of the fight. At least seven masked men were attempting to remove some barrels of chemicals from the plant, but Tex had put her foot down and argued otherwise. Taking down a few armed men should have been easy enough, but after watching her dance around the men, he noticed something was different. Tex's moves were less efficient, and more like something straight from a Jackie Chan movie. She was ducking and weaving around their guns and knives, delivering some sweeping kicks that did little to inconvenience them, missed when she punched their faces, and demonstrating some beautiful albeit unnecessary acrobatics.

Their arena was surrounded by flammable and explosive material, including the specific chemicals they were trying to cart out. Any one bullet would have put them in danger of being burned alive. Already, there was one tank that was slowly leaking, leaving a puddle of some unknown substance all over the ground. One man fired at the ground near Tex, and she stopped the bullet with a bit of a pirouette. The bullet was a tracer, designed for night shooting and allowing the firer to see where the bullets were going. They were little more than small incendiary rounds, but that was all that was needed to set the entire complex alight. At the moment, her priority was keeping the flying bullets from killing them all while occupying the thieves long enough for the police to break in and stop them.

From outside the fight, a woman with long, dark red hair approached the fight with a small crossbow in hand. She was wearing the same green trench coat as she was on the night at the docks. Poison Ivy. Then the Leaves of Three were looking for replacements for the shipment that had been confiscated. Batman jimmied open the lock on the window and leaped into the arena, landing in front of the venomous woman.

For the first time, he was able to get a very clear look at Poison Ivy. She had blood red lips that were set in a determined line and passionate green eyes. To her, this robbery wasn't for fun or sport, but was a job and one she was enthusiastic about. It took a moment, but he recognized her as Pamela Isley, the CEO of Environmental Energy Solutions. This confirmed every suspicion the EPA had about her involvement with terrorist organizations. "Batman," she said with an amused air. "Didn't you learn your lesson from last time?"

Behind him, he heard Tex break a gun and knock someone out. "Curare," he replied. "Poisonous, but treatable."

Her smile faltered, but remained true. "I have plenty more poisons to pick from."

She started to make a circle around him, and he mirrored the motion. "I'm sure you do, Pamela Isley."

For a few moments, she didn't know how to respond. "Well. Aren't you the world's greatest detective."

"Not quite."

"Are you going to beat me up like some sort of thug, now?" Her lower lip drooped in an exaggerated pout. "You wouldn't hit a girl, would you?"

" _Would you two quit flirting?_ " Tex snapped. She stopped with the fancy moves and finally started disabling the men. Out of the corner of his eye, Batman saw that four of the seven men were now in a moaning pile on the ground.

Batman pulled out a length of thin cord about five yards long, with a small weighted knife on the end. He swung it in a couple quick circles, let it fly and caught Poison Ivy's crossbow hand. With a sharp tug, he pulled her well off balance. She stumbled forward, he stepped on the cord to bring her center of gravity down, and then he kicked her in the stomach hard enough for her to have a hard time getting back up. With a booted foot, he knocked Poison Ivy's crossbow far across the floor, then caught one of her men unaware with a backhanded punch when he tried to attack him from behind.

"What were they stealing?" Batman asked Tex as she finished off the last of the men.

" _I have no idea, but the skull and crossbones on the sides of the barrels tell me I don't want to know._ " Tex threw a thief over her shoulder in time to see Poison Ivy say something into her wrist. _"Uh oh."_

"Just shoot him!" she ordered.

Tex lunged at Batman in time for a bullet to fly by their heads and hit the ground. Her shoulder hit him directly in the ribs, and they landed on the floor more or less intact. While they were scrambling to pick themselves up, the door to the plant was forced open by none other than the SWAT team. To make matters worse, the bullet that struck the ground had been able to light a spark. Batman threw a small device at the quickly growing flames. It landed near the pile of men and exploded in a mass of white fire-suppressing foam. Then he grabbed Tex by the waist and got them out through the windows in the ceiling. Glass shattered as the pulled themselves out of the burning building, either because the police were now firing at them or they had an admirer with a sniper rifle keeping the competition at bay.

Tex slid down the roof while Batman took refuge behind a chimney. " _I see Deadshot._ "

"Where is he?" He peeked around the edge of the chimney only to have a fraction of the stonework get blown away, taking a bit off the bridge of his mask's nose.

" _Three buildings directly north of us. He's on top of a flagpole._ "

"Are you up to making a distraction?"

" _He can shoot through smoke,_ " she argued.

"That's not what I was thinking." He looked up to the helicopter that was scanning the Kane Chemicals rooftop.

She followed his gaze and looked between Deadshot and the giant flying mechanical deathtrap. " _You come up with the worst plans. Ever. Alright, three batarangs and that fancy rope thing._ " He handed them over without a word.

Then she swung the rope at the helicopter like a grappling hook, and aimed it at the bar running underneath its body. When it caught hold, she took a running start off the roof and swung across the street. The pilots noticed the weight change and turned their attention to find out who was hijacking their helicopter. A batarang hit their windshield, and they found Tex who was winding up the cord. Once she had collected it, she held up her other two batarangs so the police inside could clearly see what they were. She pointed at them, then at Deadshot. The figure was far enough away that his details couldn't be seen, but he was wearing something like a long coat that looked a bit like a cape. The pilot locked onto him with a searchlight and the helicopter headed off after him. The assassin immediately leaped down and started running across the rooftops in an impressive bit of parkour.

Tex turned to Batman and gave him a thumbs-up. "Good girl," he muttered before taking off with his own grappling cable.


	36. Chapter Thirty-FIve

"There is absolutely no excuse for it," said Hilda Stofferson, an ordinary citizen and mother of two. "It's been three years and the police have gotten nowhere. The Batman still roams the streets like he owns them. Then they catch his little protege and just let her go How am I supposed to feel safe letting my children walk to school when two vigilantes have free reign?"

"I don't think they want to catch him," said Robbie Hooper, a hippie living near Millcreek park. "Batman and Tex are doing their jobs for them. They don't care if they beat everyone into submission, so long as they get the bad guys. It's police sponsored brutality."

"I think Jackie is a good role model for girls," Britney Maxwell, a short haired blonde college student said. "She's just a powerful person. She sees something wrong, and she fixes it. No beating around the bush about it. Personally, I wish I was half as brave as she is."

"I don't want to see her anywhere on the streets," lawyer James Norris snarled. "Batman was a dangerous precedent, and Tex is just as bad. How long until she starts killing cops the same way Batman did? She needs to be locked up and – "

I turned off the TV and threw the remote somewhere between the couch cushions. No more being informed, I decided. Ignorance is bliss. I threw myself back on the sofa and closed my eyes. Once again, I tried to come up with a plan of attack, but my mind was tangled up by three factors. One, I have no idea what I'm attacking. Two, I have no idea what Jackie's plan's already are, and she seems to have put some into motion. Three, Batman is supposed to be the enemy, but my plans, whatever they are, inevitably turn to how I can keep him out of the police's grasp. Everything could be solved if I would just turn him in, which I know I can do, but I always find myself finding a reason not to.

Jackie opened the door and entered the apartment looking like she had tried to make an omelet and failed hilariously bad. Egg yolks and whites were dripping off her armor and face and eggshells were stuck in her hair.

"That bad?" I remarked. She only nodded with her lips set in a tight line. "Should I get the hose?" She dropped her bag of toys and nodded again.

I climbed off the couch and walked downstairs with Jackie. Her fists were clenching and relaxing in a strangely comforting rhythm, at least for her. "I wish I knew where everyone was getting this produce," she joked. "Yesterday tomatoes, today it's eggs."

I pulled out the hose that was hidden by the side of Imogen's apartment complex just as one of our neighbors walked by. "Hey, that's not yours!" a middle-aged man in a hoodie yelled at us.

"We live here!" I shouted back. "It belongs to all of us."

"We don't want no vigilantes living here," he replied. "Tex should be run out of town before someone lynches her!"

I aimed the hose head at the jerk like a gun, but Jackie caught my hand and shook her head. "But he's being an idiot," I argued.

"I know. You still have some decorum to maintain. Let's just get this done with."

Jackie stood in the middle of the lawn with her arms outstretched while I turned the water on full blast. In the middle of November, this wasn't a pleasant task for either of us, but I can't imagine Jackie enjoyed the icy water on a cold afternoon. While I finished spraying off the egg on her suit, I noticed a few cars with obscenely expensive cameras poking out of the windows that were aimed at us. Whether they were here for Bruce Wayne's newest girlfriend or for Tex's walk of shame, I had no idea. I turned down the sprayer a bit. "Face." Jackie scrubbed down her face while I sprayed it, then I turned to her hair. Once the last of the eggshells were out, I turned off the water, coiled up the hose and put it away before we marched back up to Imogen's place.

I threw a towel at Jackie once we were inside so she wouldn't have to drip all over the carpet. "Why were you downtown in the first place? You know they hate you a lot more than anyone else."

"Went to talk to the Commissioner." She patted down her waterproof suit and let a few drops leak out that had managed to find their way in.

"Wearing your armor." I didn't think there was any way she could have been more obvious. It was almost like she was trying to make a statement.

"They like to throw rocks at me." Her head disappeared under the towel as she scrubbed out the last bits of moisture.

"A wig would do wonders, I think. So would a change of clothes. I have a closet full of disguises."

"I feel more comfortable in my armor, Jenny. I spent several years wearing it. Now that everyone knows I'm Tex, I don't see any reason to hide exactly what I am."

"But you're not Tex," replied as gently as I could. It was something that had been bugging me for a long time. "Tex was a mercenary that killed for a paycheck and inevitably died every time she was resurrected by Church and Alpha. You're as opposite of that as anyone can be. Why would you name yourself after her?"

She took off her jacket and hung it on a chair next to the door. "It's what everybody thinks of when they see me. A lot of people don't like me, but there are some that do and they like seeing me in the suit." Her boots were removed next, unlaced with expert fingers and pulled off (the right one with a bit of difficulty as it had to fit under the monitoring anklet) so their stench could hit me full in the face.

"Maybe you could try not sleeping in it," I suggested through a hand over my nose and mouth. "Or showering every once in a while."

A rare chuckle escaped her lips. "Sorry. Sometimes I forget how much Americans bathe." The next piece of equipment to come off was a utility belt that most people didn't see because it was hidden under her jacket. It was a stylized bit of black leather with four pockets, two hidden ones, and a rope used for grappling fastened to the back of it. Even without the armor, it would have been fashionable.

"Why are you carrying so much stuff?"

"The police wanted to make sure I wasn't carrying any weapons, so I brought them everything I own. They confiscated my batarangs. I was totally going to frame them." She needed a little help with getting her corset layer off. I unlatched the back of it so Jackie could breathe a little better. The only function it served was to provide some protection against bullets. Had she been wearing it that day at court, her heart probably wouldn't have stopped. As soon as it was off, she bent over to give her spine a break. "Okay, shower time." She left her things by the door and headed off to take a shower. "Oh, one more thing." Her head poked out from the bathroom. "Commissioner Gordon is coming over to talk to you."

"When?" But the door slammed shut and the water started running. I sat back down on the couch and turned the TV to something not related to Tex. _Sherlock_ was on; that's always a diverting distraction. Gordon was not one of the many people I wanted to be talking to at the moment.

Two episodes later, Jackie was in my room working on something she didn't want me to know about. Someone knocked on the door, and I sat up. I don't like answering doors of places I don't really belong in. "Imogen, door!" I called.

"You go get it," Imogen shouted back. Her voice was muffled by a door and the running of water. Right. She's in the shower now.

"Jackie, door!"

"On the phone!" she replied. With her mysterious lawyer who she hadn't allowed any of us to meet, no doubt.

I rolled off the couch and scrambled to the door. Peering through the peephole, I saw a man in a worn coat and a heavy pair of glasses with thinning brown hair and a matching mustache. I recognized him vaguely from that one brief time we met. Unlatching a few locks, I opened the door. "Commissioner."

"Ms. Harkness."

"Jenny, please." I admit, my tone was stony cold, but I still had to be polite for Jackie's sake. There was a very good reason she saved this man.

"Jenny, may I come in?" I held out a hand and allowed him to walk past me before I closed the door behind him. "I just have a few questions for you."

"Jackie said. Taken you a while to get to me. Coffee?" I went to Imogen's kitchen to grab a couple mugs.

"If you don't mind. The DA wanted to focus on Jackie while we still had her. Now that she's been bailed out, we're widening our inquiries." He took a seat in an armchair in the living room, throwing his coat over the arm. "How have you been?"

"I'm doing great," I answered honestly. I poured our coffees, adding a few sugars to mine and found out what he wanted. "I'm still employed at a job I love, I have a wonderful boyfriend, I still have all my friends, my apartment hasn't been stripped by the police and then by an angry mob, I don't get rotten vegetables hurled at me on my way home, I don't see my picture plastered like a mug shot all over the news every few minutes, I don't have strangers calling me a cop killer on the street, I don't have to be followed everywhere I go by less-than-subtle detectives." I set our mugs down on the coffee table with a distinct _clink_. "I can't say the same for Jackie."

He laced his fingers together and gave his next sentence some thought. "I'm sorry, Jenny. I'm sorry about the way everything has gone."

I sunk into my seat gracefully. "But how could it have been different? Jackie's one of the kindest, most selfless people you'll ever meet, but at the heart of everything she's done, she's an outlaw. A famous outlaw." If the Riddler hadn't made her famous, who would have noticed or cared that she worked with the Batman? Maybe he's the one I should be mad at.

"How is Jackie holding up?"

I took a sip of coffee that burned my tongue. "Jackie says she's been through worse. I believe her. Thing is, she's a runner. Her survival skills amount to, run first, fight later. The only time she stands her ground is if she has no other choice but to fight. Based on what she's done in the past, I thought she would have broken out of jail. Instead, she waited for someone to bail her out, and then didn't even go into hiding in the city. She's standing, Commissioner. That scares me because it means she's been backed into a corner. A corner I put her in and I can't see."

"If you hadn't exposed her identity, she would have died," he assured me.

"And if she hadn't saved you, I wouldn't have been put into this position. So I guess this is all Jackie's fault. She's the one who put on the suit in the first place."

"I don't think there's any one person we can blame. If anyone, we should be hunting down the sniper."

"Deadshot," I added helpfully.

"Excuse me?" This surprised him.

I forced down a swallow of coffee. "His name is Deadshot. Jackie's met him before."

"When was this?" He pulled out a notebook and prepared to take some serious notes.

"When dealing with Jackie, it's better to say 'Where' instead of 'When.'" I retrieved an iPad from my purse and started sifting through the files until I found the specific one I wanted. "Cardiff. A minor political head was shot despite Jackie trying to protect him." I handed him the tablet with the local news articles pulled up. "She chased him for a few weeks before he disappeared completely."

The articles held his curiosity for a few moments. "How did you find this?"

"Google." Alright, I followed her adventures a bit. I keep a massive number of files on her, enough to keep that specific iPad entirely occupied. Sue me. "If you want to know more about Deadshot, you'll have to ask Jackie yourself. Somehow, I don't think she wants to talk about that part of her life."

"Right." He pulled his gaze away and handed my iPad back to me. "I need to know how long you've known your sister was working with the Batman."

I couldn't help but noticeably bristle at that man's name. No, his title. No one spoke his name without a hint of reverence, Jackie more than most. She practically worshiped the man, and becoming Tex was like being his disciple. "The day Tex, the Batman and I took down the Penguin. I had no idea Jackie was even in Gotham before that night."

"She moved in with you shortly after, correct?"

"Yes. That night. She was living on the streets." Would Jackie have just left Gotham if I hadn't run into her and demanded she move in with me?

"Did you know that she was acting as Tex while she was living with you?"

"She saved my life that night. I recognized her armor immediately." Could I have stopped everything just by letting her go at that point? She could have run away as soon as the Penguin was in custody. "So, yes, I knew the entire time."

"What did you know about her nightly activities?"

For some reason, my brain transcribed that as 'knightly.' As in Dark Knight. "She told me everything that happened every night. She loved working with the Batman." Of course I had to add a 'the' before his name. Even I couldn't say his name without a 'the' most of the time. The one and only. The first and the last. The great and powerful Batman. When did he deserve to earn such a distinctive prefix?

"She said that?"

"It's the entire reason Tex existed. She had an unhealthy fixation with him before she disappeared. When she came back and Batman had killed several people, I thought she would lose faith in her hero. But Jackie is stubborn. She didn't believe he had done any of those things."

"Why not?"

A question I had posed for my sister many times before. How could she possibly fly in the face of all fact and evidence to hold on to a sliver of faith for Batman? With Jackie, though, it wasn't hope. She knew for a fact that he was innocent. Well, he wasn't a murderer at least. What I should have recognized from the beginning was that she followed her own path of inquiry instead of taking the newspaper reporters' and police's word. That's what it all came down to, wasn't it? If Jackie was wrong and Batman had killed four policemen and DA Harvey Dent, then she was no better than he was. If she was right, then she was still kind of a vigilante, but not as bad of one. The problem, then, lied in the fact that Jackie had linked her good name to Batman's. Clear Batman, and no one would hate Tex.

Finally, I had a course of action to save Tex. I set my mug of coffee down and sat back with a hint of a smile in Commissioner Gordon's direction. "You were there, weren't you? You watched Batman take your family hostage and kill Harvey Dent."

"Yes," he answered hesitantly. "That doesn't have anything to do with – "

"Oh, no, of course not. I just find it fascinating is all. Despite the fact that you were there and obviously told the truth in your report, Jackie adamantly believes that Batman has never killed anyone after conducting her own line of inquiry. I don't know how she could have possibly arrived at that conclusion." I met his eyes with as innocent an expression as I was capable of mustering. "Do you?"

"Um, no." He looked away from me and continued with his questioning. He placed his coffee mug in between us, subconsciously putting distance between us. "How did your sister contact the Batman?"

"He gave her a radio during the Riddler's blackout."

"Does she still have it?"

"No. Jervis Tetch broke it when he kidnapped me." I watched Gordon's reaction closely. Was that relief I saw? "Batman must have taken the pieces if you don't have them in evidence already."

"She mentioned that Batman calls her," he continued. His eyes darted to the right and down for a fraction of a second.

"Occasionally. The number is untraceable."

No surprise to him. Was it because he expected Batman to cover his tracks? Or because he was familiar with the practice? "Does he ever come to your apartment in person?"

"He surprised me once. I hit him with a bat." Gordon's eyebrows shot up. "He knocks now."

He gave me a dubious look. "Really?" So the Dark Knight doesn't knock for anyone else. Well, I guess no one else has ever given him a concussion. "When was the last time you saw him?"

"Just before the Mad Hatter kidnapped me. He was looking for my Dad. Honestly, I've only talked to him a handful of times. I have no idea what his patterns are yet."

"Does Jackie?"

I shrugged. "She follows trouble, and then she runs into him. I know she does it deliberately, and I know she has this sense for which kinds of trouble he'll be involved in, but … she plays it by ear. I have no idea how to replicate it, and I know she'll be avoiding him. I can't help you catch him that way."

"What if we brought you in as a consultant?" A micro-expression of disgust passed across his face. Even for me, it was difficult to catch. Did he not like the idea? Maybe bringing in outsiders bothered him.

"Jackie told you about my skill set, I see." When does she not?

"That, and there's the work you've already done for the FBI."

I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees. "Do _you_ want me to find Batman?"

"Yes," he replied too quickly. His eagerness felt forced. "You have a better chance at – "

"No," I said emphatically, cutting him off.

Relief again flitted across his face, but also a touch of surprise. "Excuse me?"

Sitting back, I crossed my legs. "I will not help you track down the Batman. Why? For three reasons, Commissioner. First, you already told me you don't want him caught."

"I'm sorry if you misunderstood me. Arresting the Batman is the MCU's highest priority."

"My mother is deaf. She taught me how to see the world at a much higher visible caliber than most others. Specifically, she taught me how to read faces and catch micro-expressions. They're little flashes of the emotion on your face that are a little more telling than what you're actually saying. When I told you that Batman's radio was broken, you were a little happy, which you shouldn't be because it's another lost lead. Now, that could mean you just hate working with electronics. However, with a talented forensics team at your disposal, I doubt that that's the case. Now why would you be relieved at having you case stalled? That brings me to my next point." I stood up to refill my coffee.

"Second," I continued. "You know how to contact the Batman, and you've done it recently. Jackie will not have told you how Batman got in touch with her for fear of exposing her partner. You lied about that, baiting an answer out of me, no doubt. Yes, you lied. When you're fabricating a statement, people look to the right, the creative side of their brain. I've been watching. You are familiar with the way he contacts his allies. Furthermore, you've taken to carrying a second cell phone. There's one in your coat that you use for family and work. There's a second in your pants pocket that you keep closer because you don't want to lose it. It weighs you down. Is that how Batman contacts you?"

"This is ridiculous, Jenny," he snapped.

Ignoring him, I sat down. "Third, you won't talk about the night Dent was murdered. I could understand it if the thought of your family being threatened was a painful one. But do you know what I see when you think about Batman pushing Dent off a three story drop? Not anger, which is what I should be seeing. Anger at being betrayed by a close ally. Anger at Tex and Jackie for subverting your efforts to catch the Dark Knight. You should be furious."

He couldn't quite look me in the eye. "She saved my life."

"Doesn't matter. She did it for Batman, and you know that. What I see is guilt, Commissioner. But guilt over what? Not protecting your family? For letting Batman get away? Or for blaming the wrong person entirely?"

Gordon shot to his feet. "You're making all this up."

my shoulders raised and fell. "Possibly, but your reactions say otherwise. What happened to Harvey Dent, Commissioner?"

"I think I have everything I need," he declared, throwing on his coat. "Thank you for your time, Jenny."

"Not a problem." He couldn't leave fast enough for his liking. As soon as he slammed the door, I chugged the last of my coffee, jumped over the couch, and raced for my room.

Jackie was sitting on my bed talking to someone important, judging by her stance. "As far as I can tell, he's been active for only a year – "

"New case. Get out," I ordered.

She's seen this look only a few times. "Beirut, I'll call you back." Her phone found its way back into her pocket as she backed away from me towards the door. "Want any help?"

"Nope. It'll be more fun this way. Don't worry. I'm only trying to prove Batman's innocence." With that, I gave her a hard push out of my room and locked myself inside. I opened my laptop, closed all my homework, and started looking up every bit of publicly available information on the Batman killings. I took a deep breath, preparing myself for the ecstasy of research.

* * *

My phone rang hours later, although it felt like I was being interrupted just as I was getting started. As it was a Saturday, I nearly ignored it, except it was Bruce calling. I turned it on to speakerphone so I could keep working. "Hi Bruce."

"Hey, Jenny. What's up?" he asked casually.

"I have a case. Like, a real one that's going to be hard. Such a tangled web of lies; it's going to be spectacular."

"What's it about?"

"Batman." I grabbed a stack of papers from my printer and started highlighting what I needed. "I need to find out if he's a murderer."

"I thought Commissioner Gordon said – "

"He says a lot of things. I need facts, not opinions. The problem with everything we know is that it all hinges on his report. All the evidence found fits his statement. Where are the outliers?"

"Why does that matter?"

"Because you don't build a case before you have all the facts, otherwise the facts are cherry-picked to fit the pre-written case instead of the case being built on the given evidence. It smells of shoddy police work the whole way through."

"Are you alright? You don't sound good. You sound … manic."

"I'm fine. I just won't be eating for the next few days. I could use your help, though. I need a Watson to bounce my ideas off of and Imogen said she's never doing that again, never ever, even if I paid her or threatened to kill her dog, she doesn't have a dog, why does she say that?" I paused to mull that one over for a second. "So?"

His voice was full of worry and dread. I couldn't miss it, but I disregarded it immediately. "I'll be right there with takeout. Stay away from the caffeine."

Caffeine? Who needs that? Not only do I have a case, but I can do something for Jackie for a change.


	37. Chapter Thirty-Six

Deadshot's job hadn't exactly been clear. He had been hired by Poison Ivy to kill Batman, and yet every time Batman came close to tracking down the Leaves of Three, a bullet would take off a chunk of his cowl or lightly graze his armor. Already he had gone through two cowls after repairing them about five times each. It was almost as if Deadshot was playing with his prey. For now, at least. A very wise woman had once said that when an assassin fails to kill you, they are not really trying. Come to think of it, that came straight from _Sherlock_ , Jenny's favorite show. She was really rubbing off.

Interpol's files had quite a bit on the assassin known as Deadshot. His earliest kill was in 2010, although no one had any idea how he managed to pull it off. One of his favorite aliases was Floyd Lawton, among others. Witnesses described him as a charming man with a New Zealand/Australian/South African accent, clever brown eyes, dark hair, and olive toned skin. The scant photographs of his face showed their accounts to be accurate. He was a tall man at about 6' 3", with a lean frame and enough muscle to prove he was a threat without the gun. His targets were, as Tex had told him, very difficult to reach. Most of the expert snipers in the would couldn't have made his daring and complicated kills. The only time anyone stood a chance at stopping him was when Tex took three shots for a minor political leader from Cardiff, and even then, she had failed. Batman's odds were not looking good.

Nothing could be done about it. Batman needed more information from the person who knew him best. And she was currently being followed by half the police in the MCU. Well, if they could track her with an ankle monitor, so could Batman.

By 'borrowing' the signal, he traced Tex to the Narrows. It wasn't one of the areas she habitually patrolled, but not a surprising place for a vigilante to be. She was wearing her armor as usual, but with the helmet down and her hair in a twisted braid over her left shoulder. People recognized her as she passed, and backed off unconsciously. Batman kept to the rooftops, gliding soundlessly between them. Tex and her undercover tail – two cops in thick coats and baseball caps – didn't suspect a thing.

She was headed down a neighborhood, or what passed as one, like she had someplace to be and wasn't going to be stopping any crime on her way. Actually, her very presence seemed to be making criminals nervous in her wake. One man put away his knife and retreated from his would-be victim. Another pulled his hand away from a purse. A street magician and con artist shooed away his audience and hid his wares away. Tex didn't care either way.

A black cat jumped out from a side alley and hissed at her. Suddenly Tex snatched up the cat and darted into the alley behind the cover of a passing crowd headed to a bar. Batman was quick enough to see her pull off her ankle monitor, which she had somehow managed to detach without setting off an alarm, and put it around the cat's neck like a collar. Then she shooed it away down the alley and climbed up a nearby fire escape just as her tail sprinted around the corner. She pushed herself into the shadows and seemed to dissolve into them. Both Batman and Tex held their breaths as the two nondescript cops consulted a tracking device before taking off down the alley.

As soon as they were out of sight, Tex continued her climb up the fire escape, stopping when she was at the eighth floor. Then she knocked on the window three times. A hand in a brown leather glove unlocked the latch and opened it for her. She stepped inside and pulled the curtains closed. Batman glided across the street and attached himself next to the window on the other side of the apartment. This one was slightly ajar, and there was a gap in the curtains. Using a night-vision periscope, he could watch and listen to Tex and her friend.

She took a seat in one of the chairs that was more springs than upholstery, and he took the one facing her. Even sitting, Batman could tell the man was a good eight inches taller than her. He wore a dark gray woolen coat over a body suit similar to Tex's, except his top half was dark red and the lower half was black paired with a set of heavy combat boots. His dark hair was a mess, but it seemed to fit him. The gun in a holster on his hip spoke to his nature: assassin. Tex was in a friendly meeting with Deadshot.

"To what do I owe this pleasure?" he asked, finally speaking. New Zealand accent, definitely.

"You're hunting a friend of mine," she replied simply. "I want you to stop."

He picked up a beer bottle sitting on an upended apple crate acting as a side table. "No can do, sweetheart. Batman's the most fun I've had in years."

"Don't call me that."

"What should I call you? Jackie? Jericho? Texas?"

"Around here, they call me Tex," she said confidently, crossing her legs. She was trying to show off, but there was an undercurrent of submissiveness that made the effort hollow.

He knocked back a swallow of the alcohol. "Tex. A remnant of the good times we had together?"

"They weren't good times. They were terrifying, you shot me, and you killed people."

"I'm a sharpshooter. What did you expect? Besides, it was always in self-defense."

"Would you stop? You never needed to kill anyone, and you know it. You enjoyed every minute of it." She sat forward and attempted another tactic. "Look, Damascus -"

"Deadshot," he snapped. It was the first time true anger had shown on his face. "You may not be done being Texas, but I am no longer Beirut's stooge."

Fear flashed in Tex's eyes, but she didn't let her demeanor reveal her weakness. "Fine. Deadshot. I'm asking you to abandon this assignment. Batman's nothing you've ever fought before. You can't win."

The mercenary chuckled. "That's the point. He's the greatest challenge yet, and if I die in the process, so be it. At least I'll be remembered."

"You won't die, and that's the point. Either you'll kill him and there will be nothing left to challenge you, or he'll catch you and you'll live out the rest of your life with the humiliation of knowing you'll never be as good as him."

"Or we'll fight to a perfect standstill until we're both bleeding and exhausted and dying. I could go for that."

"I can't. This city needs Batman. What will it take to get you to leave Gotham and never come back?"

A smug grin spread across his face. "Already been paid."

"I'll freeze your accounts."

"It was in cash."

"I'll steal it."

"Spent it already."

"I'll break your gun."

"It's amazing how many guns $2.5 million can buy. Including these." He pulled back the sleeve on his right wrist to show her a gold toned set of wrist mounted pistols.

"Then I guess there's no appealing to your good nature," she sighed, knowing the answer was no.

"Don't have one. Want some?" He held up a second bottle of beer. When she shook her head, he cracked open the top and started drinking that one. "Remember when you used to do this for me? Bargain for my life, and then fight your way to save me?"

A rat crossed in front of the periscope, sniffing at the edges. From what Batman could tell, Tex was getting uncomfortable. "Were you contracted to kill both of us, or just Batman?" she asked, moving on.

"Just him."

"Then shooting me was just a lark." Tex's jaw clenched hard.

"Didn't have any other way to say hello."

"Haven't you killed me enough already?" She yanked herself out of her chair and started pacing around the living room. "This is why I hate you."

"You don't hate me. If you did, you wouldn't be trying to run me out of town without your new partner finding out. How is that going by the way? Does he know you're here?"

"That's none of your business. And no, I didn't tell him."

Deadshot was confused. "Why not? It would have been a perfect opportunity."

"Because I thought you might make a smart decision for once and take the chance I was giving you." Tex stopped in front of Deadshot, giving him a cold, pained look. "Will you take it?"

He took another long, slow swig of beer. "I have very few rules, Texas. One of those is when I get paid, I deliver."

"Gotham needs the Batman. If you hurt him, you'll start a chain reaction -"

"Hurt?" he snapped. "You don't think I can kill him." His sardonic expression was replaced by rage. "What what makes him so special. He's just one man, nothing more than that."

"So are we," she insisted.

Deadshot jumped to his feet and grabbed her left wrist, waving her hand in front of her face. "Is _this_ human? Your hands aren't flesh and blood, half our brains are made of metal, and how many of our bones were replaced with titanium? We are better than human."

"We were not designed to kill!" Tex shouted, trying to pull her hand away. "Let go."

"Yes we were! You're an idiot, Texas. Always were."

She threw a punch with her right hand at his face, but he knocked it aside and kneed her in the stomach, catching her just under her corset. Despite having the wind knocked out of her, she swept a leg under his feet, toppling him. While she scrambled to her feet, Deadshot grabbed a handful of her hair, pulled her to her knees, and jabbed her hard in the throat. Gasping from a crushed larynx and bruised diaphragm, Tex had no choice but to listen.

He pulled her face close to his and spoke with a hushed intensity. "Here's my offer for you. You stay out of my way, or I shoot you. Right here." He poked her head right between her eyes. "No more warning shots."

The window burst in a flurry of shattered glass as a shadow forced its way inside. A black fist caught Deadshot by surprise, forcing him to drop Tex and sent him reeling back. Batman stood over Tex protectively as she put on her helmet and tried to catch her breath. "If this is between you and me," he growled, "then keep it between you and me."

"Should have known you'd be following her," the assassin grumbled as he pulled himself to his feet and brushed some dust off his coat. "I hate to take such an easy shot, though." He leveled his guns at Batman's head. "Ten second head start?"

"Better start running," Batman replied.

Deadshot gave a dramatic sigh and touched a button on his neck. "Don't say I didn't warn you." From his collar, polished steel ribbons slid out and covered his face, forming to the shape of his head. A small slit was open for his eyes and another for his mouth. The finishing touch was a circular sight made of red glass that he attached to his right eye. He raised a wrist-mounted gun. "Three, two, one."

Batman ducked in time for a bullet to graze over his left shoulder, and rushed towards the assassin. Deadshot reacted to stop him, but Batman knocked his hands away and punched him in the face. To protect himself, eh abandoned the idea of shooting Batman at close range and blocked his blows with quick darting fists. Batman caught one of Deadshot's returned blows and twisted his wrist until he was bent down and he could snake an arm around his neck and put him in a choke hold.

The problem with this hold was Deadshot's headpiece. It wouldn't allow him to put any pressure on his trachea. The mercenary gave a cold laugh. "That doesn't even work on Texas." He bend over, throwing the Dark Knight over his back. Batman landed on a weak crate, shattering it. He rolled away before Deadshot could shoot him, and leaped to his feet right when Tex hit him in the side in a tackle. While she wasn't big enough to knock him over, it was enough of a distraction for Batman to launch another barrage of blows.

Deadshot stumbled back in surprise at the force and number of shots Batman was delivering. He was knocked side to side, making his head ring in his helmet. Deadshot ducked under his fists and struck Batman lower, hitting a well armed solar plexus. It was enough of a pause for him to turn sideways and kick him in the knee. Batman's leg buckled and the mercenary landed another kick in his stomach. Then as he was sent rolling backwards, Deadshot grabbed one of his holstered sidearms and trained it on Batman.

Out of the corner of the room, Tex jumped in front of her partner just as Deadshot pulled the trigger. The bullet hit her in the shoulder, knocking her off balance. She stumbled backwards, tripped over Batman on the ground, and fell on her back, As Deadshot readied to shoot again, Batman threw his entire weight at him. His gun went off as they fell, the shot hitting the ceiling, and was knocked out of his hand when he hit the ground.

Before he could grab another gun or aim his wrist-mounted ones, Batman trapped Deadshot's hand under a knee and held up a fist with three batarangs between his fingers. "Stand down," he growled through clenched teeth.

"Really? Shuriken? I'm bulletproof, idiot." Using one of his legs as leverage, he threw Batman off and switched their positions, holding his gun up over his head. "Surrender."

Batman punched Deadshot's arm right between the bicep and the bone. Despite his body armor, the sharp blow made an impact and his arm went completely limp. Deadshot tried again with his left hand, but Batman knocked his arm aside and kicked him back into the wall. He hit it hard and sank into the ground as Batman regained his footing. The assassin scrambled backwards as he grabbed something out of his coat.

Just as Batman was about to apply the finishing touches, Tex blocked his path and pushed him towards a window. "Tex, what are you – "

That's when he noticed Deadshot was holding two small metal cylinders, had pulled out both pins and tossed them into the middle of the apartment. Tex gave Batman one final shove and he tumbled backwards out of the window. His reflexes whipped out a grappling gun and shot a cable at the roof. It slowed his descent for an instant before a bright orange-red plume of flames exploded from the apartment and severed his line.

He managed to roll with the fall when he hit the ground. Moments after the dizzying blast, a second one rocked the neighborhood and sent Tex flying out of the same window. She cleared the fire escape and landed squarely on the roof of a parked car, setting off its alarm. Metallic moans let him know that she survived the impact.

Above their heads, the apartment blazed and the flames threatened to spread. An entire corner of the building was blown off, but was found on the street fifty feet away. Smoke-darkened bricks littered the road. Batman pulled Tex off the roof of the car, shaking her a bit to bring her back to her senses. "We have to get everyone out!"

" _Building's abandoned,_ " she said. " _We should go before the police get here._ "

With the obstacle of evacuating civilians out of the way, he could focus on more important things. He scanned the rooftops, hazy with blistering heat and acrid smoke. "Where is Deadshot going?"

" _How would I know?_ " she said. Her voice was much quieter than usual, still recovering from Deadshot's blow.

He aimed a grappling gun at the buildings in the direction Deadshot had to have gone, then put it away when he remembered that the blast had ruined his last one. "He'll be long gone by now," he growled through his teeth.

" _There's nothing you can do_ ," she said, tugging on his cape. " _We need to go!_ "

In a show of a phenomenally quick response, the police and firefighter lights and sirens were lighting up the street from the south. The authorities were the last thing on his mind, but their arrival would prove a problem for the both of them. The neighbors, attracted by the noise, started to leave their homes and flock around the burning building. They would have to provide enough of a cover for Tex and Batman to slip past and avoid notice. The two started running in a full on sprint away from the heat and the action.

Batman followed Tex's path as she seemed to have one already chosen. Left, right, over a wall, left again, through a hole in a rickety old fence covered in torn advertisements – he opted to leap over it – up a fire escape to get over a dead end, and down another trash strewn alley. Along the way the only people they encountered were homeless men and women, who didn't even react as they ran past. One even waved at them as they leaped over his legs.

Tex slowed to a stop at the end of one particular alley. Batman did the same, but held back to see what she was doing. Lying in the corner was a woman so old her skin was tissue paper thin. She was bundled up in brown woolen clothing that had seen a couple decades of use. Her gray hair had scattered remains of garbage tangled in it from her bedroll sheltered by a few cardboard boxes. A tabby cat poked its head under her am, and she scratched its head. It was only one of a few that huddled around her for warmth. Tex picked up one of the cats, a black one with her tracking device attached.

"Othello's been having quite the night," the woman said with a mouth completely void of teeth.

" _Did the mean police chase you?_ " she cooed as she removed the collar. The cat jumped out of her arms and returned to its mommy. Tex then pressed a sizable bill into the woman's hand. " _Thank you._ "

"Just tell your friend to stop by once in a while if he wants to help us out too." She sent a glare in Batman's direction.

Hopping on one foot, Tex managed to get her anklet back on. " _Well, I think I've had enough fun for one day._ "

With a jerk of his head, Batman let her know they were not finished and they would be speaking one on one. He took to the fire escape, wishing he had carried a spare grappling gun, and started climbing for the roof. Echoing footsteps of Tex's boots hitting the ladder told him she was following close behind. When he reached the roof, he crouched at the edge to look back across the city blocks where the fire was still blazing. The heavy black clouds of smoke were rolling along the streets and choking the sky.

"I've never seen grenades do that."

Tex stood behind him, her arms crossed. " _They're high incendiary explosives. Not his favorite toy as they tend to get out of control._ "

"I take it you've had some experience with them."

" _I've survived a few, yes. He prefers to be more precise._ "

They watched as the firefighters fought to take control of the blaze. First the fire seemed like a trick candle, going down a bit with the water, but then another blast would reignite everything. The crew was persistent, however, and the flames eventually yielded to their ministrations. "You could have taken him," said Batman, breaking the silence.

Tex gave him a long look before she replied. " _You don't mean that in a complimentary sense, do you._ "

"No."

" _You think I just let him get away because we were friends at one point._ " The bitterness in her voice was hard not to miss.

"I don't know what to think because you have been deliberately hiding information from me." He stood and faced her. "You could have mentioned that Deadshot was your partner."

" _He was never my partner. Damascus was my partner. We did good things together._ "

"What was the nature of your relationship? Romantic?"

It took Tex a few seconds to come up with an answer. " _Professional. You don't know me that well, do you._ "

"You don't exactly make that easy. I can barely account for half of your movements in the last three years. I don't know if I should even trust you!"

" _Oh, come on, you've never trusted me._ "

"I trusted you to do the right thing. Now I catch you trying to help a sniper escape the authorities."

" _It's not like that._ "

"You were trying to coerce him into skipping town! That's aiding and abetting!"

" _He is going to kill you!_ " she screamed, throwing her hands up in the air. " _How can you not see this? Deadshot will not stop until you are dead, and he won't just stop with killing me or Gordon to get you out into the open. He didn't care if that building was abandoned or not; I picked it. The sooner I cut him off an obsession, the fewer people will die._ "

"That's why he has to be stopped," Batman said, taking a step closer. "He has to face justice for crimes."

" _I don't care. This is where you and I have differing philosophies. I keep people from getting hurt. You put crooks in jail._ "

"The two goals aren't mutually exclusive."

" _Look, I can take care of Deadshot._ "

"You've made it clear that you can't. We've got two terrorists in Gotham: Deadshot and The Leaves of Three. I'll allow you to investigate Poison Ivy."

" _Allow_ _me?_ " she said incredulously.

"Start with Pamela Isley. And stay out of my way." He took a few steps to the edge of the roof and activated his cape's gliding abilities.

" _For the record_ ," she said as he stretched out his 'wings,' " _I told you so._ " Then Batman dived into the night sky and glided away.


	38. Chapter Thirty-Seven

"Hi Ms. Harkness, my name is Vicki Vale. I'm with the Gotham City Chronicle."

I flipped over a stack of the city library's newspapers. "Uh huh."

"I was wondering if we could sit down for an interview. I wanted to ask you about your experiences with Tex and Batman."

These papers were from three and a half years ago, completely disorganized, and I had finally found the month that I wanted: the period right during the Joker attacks. In particular, I had just stumbled upon the Gotham City Chronicle, or the Chrony as several people had informed me it was informally called. I wasn't interested in the content as much as I was the names.

"Ms. Harkness?"

I shifted a fraction of my attention back to my phone call. "Sorry. You caught me in the middle of a research project."

"Should I call back later?"

"Eh, no. I only picked up the phone on accident. You're unlikely to even reach me later."

"Could we set up a time for me to come over?"

Time? I barely had time to fit in my extracurricular research what with my overtime at Wayne Enterprises and studying for class. "I'm not really interested in doing an interview at this time. Goodbye Ms. Vale." I hung up on her, just as I had all the other enterprising journalists that wanted a stab at my angle on everything happening in Gotham.

Most of what the papers printed, I already knew or had gleaned from the internet. However, since most of the information I wanted was not found in the free part of the online archives, I had to go find the papers themselves. I also had a hunch that there may be a few controversial articles that were taken off the online versions of the newspapers. So, I dug through the newsprint.

These articles had the same re-used quotes from the authorities, the same evidence, the same witnesses, all of them re-packaged and re-worded day after day, year after year. The Joker was a terrorist, the Joker was caught by the SWAT team, the Batman killed some cops, and Harvey Dent was murdered by the Dark Knight. One straightforward story with no confusion, like it had been fed to the media and then never questioned. Not once did these journalists question the information they were handed, nor was there any attempt to remain unbiased. I spotted several unattributed quotes (clearly from the police) attempting to sway public opinion against Batman. They did a spectacular job.

Except one article stood out to me. By all intents and purposes, it shouldn't have. It was a small, hidden in the back of the local section a month after Dent's death. Entitled, "Did Batman Do It?" it re-examined every bit of evidence the police had presented and found it lacking. In fact, it made the claim that maybe Batman wasn't to blame. The next day, the editor printed a redaction notice and an apology for the nature of the article. Finally, an journalist doing their job, by the name of … Victoria Vale.

I grumbled as I found her number and called her back.

"Vicki Vale speaking."

"Ms. Vale, this is Jenny Harkness. It appears that I was premature in rejecting your interview."

I heard some papers shuffling as she sat up in surprise. "So you'll do it? When can I meet with you?"

"As soon as possible. However, I have two conditions. One, we don't talk about Mr. Wayne." I really didn't feel like being part of a society story.

"Done." She didn't want to write one.

"Second, I have some questions of my own about an article you wrote a little over three years ago. One that may have gotten you in trouble."

"The Batman one?" She sounded confused at my request.

"That's the one. I assume you kept your notes. I'm at the city library right now, so could I just meet you at your office?"

"Sure. That would be perfect."

I put away the stacks of newspapers and left the library a messier place than when I found it. Ten minutes later, I crossed a fairly deserted main street and passed through the glass doors of a tan brick and mortar building still standing from the forties. From the looks of the exterior, the last time there was any repair work done, it was in the eighties. Maybe. The receptionist sitting at a nearly antique oak desk was trying to answer three phone lines at once and keep everyone going to their proper place. "Excuse me?"

"One minute please," he automatically replied. Well okay. I gave him some time as he sorted out his tangled mess of phones. Eventually the ringing gave him a break. "How can I help you?"

"I'm looking for Victoria Vale's office."

"Fourth floor, room 4012."

I took a cramped and creaking elevator up to a news floor practically screaming with the sounds of stories being made and confirmed; editors shouting at their reporters, designers discussing inches of ad space, two people having an argument over grammar. There were rows of computers filling the hall with printers at each end. Paper and toner were all over the place, with red pens coming down on them furiously, driven by copy staff on deadline. I spotted a few liquor bottles not very carefully hidden behind monitors and in briefcases. Definitely the copy room.

The hall to my left took me away from the action. I stepped out of the way of a few reporters rushing to catch interviews at a couple different crime scenes while they were getting what information they could on their cell phones. 4012. I knocked twice on the open door. Vale, who was on her phone at her desk, waved me in. Compared to the rest of the Chronicle's offices, her room was immaculate despite the piles of binders in the bookshelves around the tiny room. I sat down in the little wooden chair that had a broken top bar while she finished her call.

"Is Pamela Isley considered dangerous?" she typed up her interviewee's response on her severely outdated desktop computer with her office phone held to her ear by her shoulder. "What about the rest of the Leaves of Three? Any leads on them?"

Vickie Vale was no nonsense. She wore the type of office-wear I wish I could - athletic flats, jeans, sweater – and had her dark blonde hair in a high ponytail. Her hands showed several pen lines from taking notes and missing the paper. A few of the notes ended up on her wrist. Behind her on the wall, were her credentials and a few framed awards, most notably a Neiman Fellowship in 2010, a National Journalism Award and a Joe Petrosino Prize, both for Investigative Reporting in 2012.

"I'm sorry that took so long," she said, setting the phone down in its cradle. "How are you doing, Jenny?"

"Just fine. This story you're working on, is it about the Mad Hatter or my sister?"

"Both, but it's more about you."

I raised an eyebrow. "I'm news?"

"You've been involved with every major crime in Gotham in the past four months. That's either an amazing coincidence – "

"Or I need a new sister."

"She gets you into that much trouble, does she?"

"Jackie has never asked me to get involved with anything. If I can help her, I do, but she would prefer if I stayed as far away from Batman as possible."

"I see." She took a voice recorder out of her desk drawer, turned it on, and set it on top of a stack of papers. "Why don't we start from the beginning?"

"The Penguin?"

"I'm thinking more along the lines of 2012, when Jackie first went missing."

* * *

_Thirty-Six Chapters of Exposition later ..._

* * *

Three and a half years, and I had managed to stay out of the news media's clutches. Until now, when I was willing to sell my soul for a few sources that might not pan out. It took Ms. Vale a little over an hour to pull my entire life's story out of me, and that is no easy task especially when there is so much I can't talk about because of the court cases still open.

"What do you think of Batman?"

That question caught me unaware. "In general?"

"In person. How does he strike you?"

"He's … big. Larger than life. I can see how he's imposing to most people, but I wasn't scared of him. Maybe I'm just arrogant, but I'm pretty sure I can ruin him before he can hurt me. If it ever came to that. I've always had this feeling that he wants to protect me. To protect all of us. That's why I can't understand why he murdered Harvey Dent and all those cops and mobsters."

Ms. Vale pursed her lips for a moment, then turned off the recorder. "Do you think he actually did it?"

"Batman doesn't use guns. But everyone he killed was shot except for Harvey. I don't have enough proof that he did it apart from a confession from Commissioner Gordon. But I also have no idea who else could have done it."

"I think I can help you with the first part." She scoped out the hallway for a moment before unlocking one of her desk's bottom drawers. Then, from a hidden bottom, she pulled out three DVDs in white envelopes. "You can't tell anyone I have these. This is interrogation footage of the Joker, conspicuously missing the sound; this one is the surviving security footage from Gotham General Hospital; and this is data from when SWAT was attacked by Batman and captured the Joker."

I took them from her hand and slipped them into my purse. "Let me guess. You 'borrowed' them from the Police Department and forgot to give them back."

"Actually, I made copies. And I keep having to make more copies and keep them in fireproof safes because Batman keeps stealing them."

Why does that ring a bell? Makes sense that he has no concept of personal space. "How do you know it was him?"

"Because we had a chat and he told me to quit sticking my nose where it didn't belong. He rescued me from a mugging a couple months after Dent was killed. Then he told me that I should quit digging for something that wasn't there. Now, I don't know about you, but when Batman tells you that there's nothing to find, you know that there's gotta be something there. I kept digging, and I noticed my notes kept getting 'misplaced.'"

"Did you find something, though?"

"Sort of. I did some math, and something didn't add up. Commissioner Gordon took charge of the SWAT team going in to rescue the hostages from the hospital, but he left suddenly, and Lieutenant Chang took over. Soon afterward, Gordon called in the police again to 250 52nd street because his family was being held hostage. He never said who was involved. This was before Batman had taken care of the Joker. There's no way Batman could have kidnapped Commissioner Gordon's family."

"Then what was Harvey Dent doing there?"

"Exactly my question. Furthermore, the gun that killed Batman's other victims was found with Dent's body, but with no prints."

"But Dent wasn't shot. He fell off the building."

"Or he was pushed." Vicki stole another glance towards the hallway, but found no listening ears. "I don't think Batman killed anyone. All of the cops that were killed had ties to Sal Maroni and the mob."

"The police said Batman killed them because they were dirty," I argued, playing Devil's Advocate.

"Think about it, though. Gordon was just barely starting to clean up his crew. The image of the police force is changing to something better, something Gotham can be proud of, and he finds he has dirty cops. How is the Dent Act supposed to get passed if the GCPD can't even keep their crew free from organized crime? So, the GCPD gets rid of the evidence, and Dent catches them. Dent has to be killed quickly. They probably tried to make it look like a suicide, killing him in the same place his girlfriend was murdered. But then Batman got involved and they had to have a fall-guy."

"I don't know," I interrupted. "A convoluted conspiracy theory over a masked vigilante that routinely beats criminals to a bloody pulp who lost control? That's a little too much to swallow. Besides, why would Batman keep insisting he killed them? I think it's slightly more simple than that." I stood up and shook her hand. "Thank you for the information. I'll see if there are more alibis for Batman and get back to you with what I find."

She gave me a smile in return. "It was good to meet you, Jenny. Good luck."

* * *

When I opened the door to Imogen's apartment, a giant black wasp flew right at my face, forcing me to duck. The thing darted away from my face and buzzed back around the living room into Jackie's hands. "Oops. Sorry."

"Is that ..." I grabbed the machine out of her hands. It somewhat resembled a wasp from its shape, with a small cockpit and a bigger rear engine that had a jet engine forming its stinger. The wings were small outer rockets that helped to stabilize the whole thing. The whole thing was no bigger than a small cat. "This is Bruce's VTOL aircraft."

She gave me a grin that begged me to forgive her. "I may or may not have taken an accidental peek through your bag the last time you were at the restaurant with Mr. Wayne. And then improved on the design."

"Define accidental." The wasp lifted out of my hands and flew around my head a couple times. I batted it away. "Quit it."

"I'm not controlling it." She grabbed it out of the air. "I put my left hand's AI in it. Didn't want to build a remote control."

"Did you build this from scrap metal?"

"Completely." She nodded resolutely.

"How many times did you break into Wayne Enterprises?"

"Just the once, and it was before he bailed me out, so I feel kind of bad about it now." She switched the wasp off and the room instantly felt noisier. Somehow, her little machine was dampening all sound around it. "I just needed to borrow a teeny tiny bit of uranium."

"You put a nuclear reactor in that thing?"

"Oh, please." She looked disgusted for a moment. "I made a tokamak."

"I'm not entirely sure how that works as you don't need uranium to make a tokamak, but you are giving that back to Bruce before you can be charged for copyright infringement or corporate espionage. Excuse me." I brushed past her and went to my room.

As soon as I opened the door, I saw the floor. Which should not have been possible because I left my entire room wallpapered and carpeted with my research and notes. My room wasn't just tidy. It was perfectly free of papers of all kinds except for one. Next to my window – my _open_ window – was a short note pinned to the wall by a batarang. I tore it off.

_Jenny,_  
_This investigation needs to stop before things get ugly. I am a murderer. Leave it at that.  
_ _-B._

"Jackie!" I roared. "Get Batman on the line right now!"

She raced into my room only to be taken aback by how clean it was. "Whoa. Did Mrs. Hudson stop by?"

"Tell him if he doesn't bring me back my research by the end of the day, I will strangle him in his sleep."

"What's the point? Don't you have it all memorized anyway?"

I punched her in the arm. "It's the principle of the matter. Call him!"

"It doesn't work like that. If either of us try to contact each other, the police will take Batman in. Well, they'll try. They're not very good at it."

"Do I look like I care?" I snapped.

"Jackie, Jenny!" Imogen called before poked her head through my door. "Quit yelling. The neighbors are complaining. Also, you need to see this right now."

She took us back to the living room where a special news bulletin was playing on TV. The broadcast showed a giant red nuclear symbol behind its anchor along with two scrolling bars of text on the top and bottom of the screen, filling us in on the details. They informed us that the police wanted everyone to remain indoors for at least the next twenty-four hours.

"Energy Solutions Co. has reported the theft of at least six tons of radioactive waste that were en route to a disposal site in Montana," said anchorman Steve Richards. "Environmental terrorist group Leaves of Three, led by Gotham native Pamela Isley, has claimed responsibility for the theft. Going by codename Poison Ivy, Isley released this message to Channel Five News."

The station put up a copy of Poison Ivy's letter. Her script was neat and precise, and it even had a letterhead decorated with her initials surrounded by ivy. "Gotham City," Richards read from the letter, "your time of decadence and destruction has come to an end. The toll you take on the ecosystem is far too much for it to bear. Better to let one city burn than let the rest of the planet follow suit. The Leaves of Three have constructed six dirty bombs and placed them around Gotham at the worst offenders. This is Gotham's last warning to change their ways."

"Looks like I won't be back for a couple days," Jackie muttered.

"The police are treating this as a terrorist threat," Richards continued. "All citizens are advised to remain indoors until the radioactive waste can be found."

"And cue running for the streets," Imogen finished for the anchorman as she turned off the TV. "No one's going to stay put. The National Guard should be evacuating the city."

"Might spook the terrorists and they set off the bombs," Jackie said, frowning. "If there is a blast, it's best to be inside. Preferably in a basement."

"I'll do you one better," I said. "Imogen, would you like to go visit my boyfriend?"

"I don't know if that's a good idea. I would prefer it if you stayed put."

"I want to get as far away from the city as I can," Imogen said.

"I'm with her," I agreed. "Bruce's mansion is probably the safest place we could be." Besides, I need to see if he has a safe that Batman can't crack. Hopefully my DVDs would be safe there.

Jackie shook her head, but she wasn't going to argue with us. "Then call me when you get there. And maybe also a couple times along the way." Her hands were twisting themselves into knots.

"Something bothering you?"

"How do you make a dirty bomb?"

I shrugged. "Bit of radioactive material, a bit of explosives, and kaboom. You've got a bomb that can scare people, but doesn't actually cause long-term damage. It's more of a disruption, really, because people think of it as a mini-nuclear explosive and panic, and if it actually does go off, it has to get cleaned up."

"Then why are we running?" Imogen asked.

"Like I said: people panic. I don't feel like sticking around for a repeat of the Riddler's Blackout."

"So no chemicals required?" Jackie continued.

"Not really. Why?"

"The Leaves of Three have been stealing various chemicals for weeks. I thought they might pull some sort of big move like this, but that it would be a chemical attack. Now they just pull a dirty bomb out of nowhere? I don't like it."

"Talk to Batman. I'm not the weapons expert. Imogen, let's get going."

Jackie armored up in record time. I had barely finished up a short phone call to Alfred asking permission to come over, when she gave me a hug goodbye. She squeezed hard and held onto me for a long time. "I love you Jenny."

"No one's going to kill us. We'll be fine," I said. "Promise not to get shot?"

It took her a moment to answer. "I'll do my best."

Jackie put on her helmet and climbed out the window, and Imogen and I got in her car and left her apartment behind.


	39. Chapter Thirty-Eight

"Master Bruce, Ms. Harkness and her friend have taken up refuge in the guest rooms in light of the bomb threats. How should I explain your absence?" Alfred asked, cutting straight to the more pertinent question.

Batman double-checked his Geiger counter on the Batpod. Slight traces of radioactivity were definitely down the street. "Tell them I got stuck at work."

"On a Sunday?"

"I was working on a project when the building got locked down."

"Jenny's not going to buy that for long."

"Distract her then. Tell her that joke you know."

"She says she's got evidence that could prove Batman's innocence."

"I can't worry about what Jenny might or might not have right now. I need to find these bombs." The Geiger counter started ticking even faster, showing a spike of radioactivity to his left and Batman pulled the Batpod in a sharp turn down the street. "I'll figure something out later."

The street was choked by parked police cars, but he took to the sidewalks to avoid them. With Poison Ivy's threat, the police were taking no chances and came out in full force. Several people had to run out of his way before he raced past. A few brave policemen reacted too late and fired at his back, but he was moving too fast for them to aim accurately, and with too many civilians in the street, they couldn't afford to keep firing or give chase.

Batman turned right, into the business district. With high rise buildings surrounding him and a suspicious absence of police, the whole area felt like a trap. An alarm went off on the Batpod indicating an incoming missile. He heard the rocket before he saw it flying straight towards him. He pushed the Batpod to the right with all his strength before the blast hit the street right next to him, kicking asphalt and dirt at his tires.

The shooter was on top of the Call building directly ahead and preparing to fire again. He raised the rocket-launcher to his shoulder and let it fly. Batman pulled the Batpod in such a sharp turn that the wheels rolled sideways, but the missile hit the ground just in front of his tire. The bike hit the pit and flipped forward, throwing Batman several yards from the blast impact.

As Batman recovered his footing, he watched the shooter jump down from the roof onto the building to the east, sticking the landing with a roll that got him back on his feet so he could run away. Batman gave half a smirk. The man was in his territory now. He fired a grappling cable at the rooftops and went after the assassin.

A somewhat familiar trench coat hem disappeared over the edge of the roof. Batman got a running start and leaped off, gliding across the street to the building Deadshot was scaling with remarkable speed. His landing was silent compared to his adversary's when he caught the fire escape below Batman.

He peered over the edge. "Deadshot," Batman growled.

The man looked up and pulled a targeting scope over his right eye. "Texas was right. You do have the best toys." Deadshot threw three gray balls the size of marble shooters at Batman. Smoke shot out of them , concealing the assassin as he hurried up the ladders and darted around Batman. Annoyed at being assaulted with his own tricks, Batman turned on the sonar tracking lenses in his cowl. Paired with a pulse emitter in his possession, he could see straight through the smoke and spotted Deadshot trying to sneak by.

He grabbed the assassin by his collar and yanked him down to the ground. "I'm taking you in," he said as he punched him in the face, hoping to stun him. However, his hand just bounced off Deadshot's metal mask.

"You're welcome to try, but it's not going to happen." Using both his feet, he kicked Batman flat in the chest. When the vigilante stumbled backwards, he jumped to his feet and took a leap off the roof, landing on the one next door behind an air conditioning unit, and just kept running. Batman took to memory-cloth wing and glided after him.

Despite Batman having the advantage of knowing the city rooftops like the back of his Batcave, Deadshot was not only fast, but there were plenty of air ducts and sheds and clotheslines to hide behind. He was using the obstacles to his advantage, ducking around them and changing directions faster than Batman could in the air. Batman's sonar vision helped him keep track of him every time he made a sound, but noisy heating and air devices were starting to throw him off.

Deadshot seemed to be going straight for a moment when he ran behind an air vent. A second later, he didn't reappear when he should have. Batman pulled in his cape and came down gently on the ledge. Flipping off his sonar lenses, he scanned the area and opened his ears for any rogue sounds. Behind one of the air ducts, Batman spotted the tails of a long trench coat, but when he pounced on it, he found it was only hung up on a satellite dish. He tore it off and left it on the ground.

A window shattered somewhere below his feet. He looked down the side of the building and spotted Deadshot climbing into an office three floors down. So he jumped off the ledge, slowing his fall with a cable hooked to his belt, and rolled inside. As soon as he was in, bullets started flying at him, a couple glanced off his armor. He dived behind a desk and into a side office just as a bullet pierced a water cooler next to him.

"So you use the darkness as a shield and a weapon," Deadshot taunted. "Let me guess: night vision? Or are you just really ugly?"

Batman threw a couple batarangs in Deadshot's direction, creating a moment of distraction so he could move towards him a few yards.

All at once, the floor's lights turned on, filling the whole office with a stale white shine. "I'm going with option two." He strolled out into the hallway, making himself a painfully obvious target. With a large rifle slung over his back, he walked backwards towards the other end of the office, keeping his wrist-mounted pistols at the ready.

With his cover gone and Deadshot unsure of where he was hiding, Batman leaped out into the open and raced for the assassin. The surprise gave him a couple seconds clear of gunfire, but Deadshot was back on the ball in a flash, firing at the Dark Knight. He dodged the bullets as best he could, but was rewarded with hits to his armor that felt like being punched repeatedly. Batman got close enough to knock one of Deadshot's arms to the side and punch him in the face. In response, Deadshot tried shooting with his other arm, only for Batman to jam a batarang into the barrel and have it blow up in his face.

The assassin retreated, holding his injured hand to keep the blood from leaking out. "Okay, you're very good. I'll give you that. Problem is, you are not my target tonight." With his right hand, he shot out the window behind him. Batman came in for another round, but he dodged his punches and hit him square in the spleen, then stuck his cape to the ground with a hunting knife. While Batman was occupied, Deadshot took the rifle off his back, aimed, and fired at the street below.

* * *

Before leaving to chase down the six dirty bombs, Tex stopped by the police station to speak to Commissioner Gordon. Due to the chaos sparked by Poison Ivy, the entire station was in an uproar, police getting and giving orders every which-way while trying to gear up and go. It was not the place for a curious civilian to enter, especially not one that had recently been arrested for vigilantism.

Jackie was stopped by a detective in a grease-stained jacket that was stretched as far as its buttons would allow. "Detective … Bullock," she read from his badge. "I need to talk to Gordon."

The hardened and portly officer flicked a chewed up toothpick near her face. "Not on your life. We have enough to deal with without vigilantes getting involved."

"I can help. I'm bulletproof and stuff. Bring me in as a specialist or a consultant."

"A specialist in _what_ , exactly? Do you have a Geiger counter on you?"

"Sort of. I can see radioactivity traces with my helmet."

Just then, Commissioner Gordon marched into the fray with directions and orders. "Everyone listen up! One of the bombs was spotted at Benson Electronics Headquarters. I need at team of thirty people to assist the bomb squad with evacuation. Bullock, Montoya, you're with me."

A Hispanic woman with long black hair pulled into a ponytail got her weapon out of a drawer and holstered it while Bullock gave Tex a triumphant grin. "See ya 'round, kid."

Gordon noticed who was talking to his detective. "Tex, you too."

"Yes sir." She returned Bullock's smile with one of her own and fell into step beside Gordon. "How can I help?"

"I need to know if you or a friend of yours have any extra intel on this Poison Ivy." He opened the door for her and led everyone to his SUV.

"My friend, er, Flying-Mouse-Man has been occupied with Deadshot who has been trying to kill him for the last couple weeks." Detective Bullock passed her to claim shotgun, so she climbed into the back seat behind him. "I, admittedly, do not have much."

"What do you have?" Gordon turned on the siren and raced out of the parking lot, leading the charge to Benson Electronics.

"I know that the Leaves of Three were smuggling in Datura, which is weird because it's legal to grow and use."

"I've never heard of it," Detective Montoya said.

"It's kind of like Peyote. People have used it as a religious drug to induce hallucinations, but it's easy to overdose on, there's no anti-toxin for it, and its definitely not like dropping acid. Not that I've ever done that. Datura's legal because it isn't fun to use."

"How does this help us?" Bullock said, cutting her off. "They have a nuclear bomb!"

"I never said it helped." She tucked her hair into her collar and put on her helmet. " _It's just something to keep in mind. And it's a dirty bomb, not a nuclear bomb._ "

Gordon pulled into a parking lot behind a large van belonging to the bomb squad. The two detectives and the Commissioner hopped out of the SUV, followed by Tex who was taking her time, and surveyed the setup of police and SWAT personnel. The six story building was completely surrounded, but because all the walls were basically tinted windows, there was no way to see in or understand was was going on inside. SWAT was just about ready to storm the building. "What's the situation?" Gordon asked the head of SWAT.

"Anonymous callers said they saw a bomb on the second floor of this building," the middle-aged man covered in black gear said. "Can't go in until we get eyes up there and confirm the device exists."

"There's no way anyone could have seen the bomb if they weren't involved. Montoya, follow up on those tips. See if you can trace the calls."

"On it," Montoya said before joining the SWAT team to trade information.

"Tex, what can you see?"

She stepped into a bit of empty space on the parking lot and stared up at the second floor. " _I see three people and a big ..._ " She held her hands up above her head to give them a sort of sense of size. " _Something. It's not radioactive, but the three guys are working on it, so I assume it's bad._ "

"Could be employees," said Detective Bullock.

Gordon raised an eyebrow. "This late at night? And Tex, are you sure they don't just have the nuclear waste shielded?"

She nodded her head. " _Nuclear waste containers are a lot more leaky than their manufacturers would have you believe, and they hold it better than anything else. I would see it even if your Geiger counters didn't._ "

The SWAT team leader turned his attention to the bomb squad. "We have new intel from Tex. Can we confirm it?"

"If this isn't a dirty bomb, then there's no reason to stay here," Detective Bullock said as he turned to leave.

Gordon stopped him. "The Leaves of Three bothered to call this in. They want us here and we need to know why."

" _Commissioner, their men are up there and they know you're here. They need to be apprehended now._ "

"You've never asked for permission before."

" _Well, you've never known who I was before._ "

"Speaking of which," Bullock interrupted, "if we know who you are, why do you bother with the voice scrambler?"

Tex hung her head. " _I don't actually know how to turn it off._ " She stole Bullock's walkie-talkie, hooked it to her belt, and ran through the crowd of policemen and into the building. The SWAT team noticed her pass the perimeter and immediately sent four men after her.

The lobby was dark, deserted, and noticeably open with nowhere for the SWAT team to use as cover. Tex headed straight for the stairs to the second floor. "Freeze! Tex, stand down!"

She didn't listen. " _They're upstairs, guys. Try to keep up._ " When she disappeared around a corner, they had no other choice but to follow her up. Tex kept to the walls and the shadows, making her footsteps as quiet as possible. At the end of the hallway, she stopped, putting her hand up with a fist to get the SWAT team to do so as well. With a brief look with her x-ray vision, she reported her findings in hand signals. Three men, two guns. The lead man nodded to let her know he understood. Then she stood back to let them do what they do best.

The SWAT team burst through the door with a battering ram. "Freeze! Hands where I can see them!" and other such phrases were shouted as the Leaves of Three were taken down. They made it very easy for the SWAT team as they immediately put up their hands and set down their weapons. In under thirty seconds, the men were neutralized and handcuffed with plastic zip-ties.

Tex rounded the corner when the men were down and stopped in her tracks when she saw what they had been working on. It was a large cylinder shaped bit of machinery with a control panel and screen in the middle. " _Gordon, this is bad,_ " she radioed.

"Is it a bomb?" he said back.

" _No. The last time I saw one of these, the Riddler filled it with sarin gas._ " Turning to the SWAT team, she yelled, " _Run! Get them out of here!_ " They were already dragging the prisoners out of the room at the mention of sarin gas.

"That's why they wanted the police here. Is it set to detonate?"

" _I don't know. The Riddler's was remote controlled. This one might be too._ "

"Tex, you need to leave," the last of the SWAT team told her.

" _If you don't leave now, I'm throwing you out that window_ ," she snapped back.

"We're sending in the bomb squad," Gordon said.

" _Not necessary. I can disarm it._ " She hooked the radio back onto her belt and searched the lab for a screwdriver, only to find the SWAT guy still there. " _What are you doing?_ "

"I can't leave you here alone, Tex."

She shrugged and looked underneath the device in the middle of the room. " _Then make yourself useful. I need pliers and wire strippers._ " Grabbing a flathead screwdriver from a nearby table, she laid down on the ground and pulled herself underneath the bomb like it was the engine of a car. " _What's your name?_ "

"Jacob." The SWAT guy scrambled through various tools, making a mess of things, until he found some small needle-nose pliers and a bigger wire stripper. Tex unscrewed the bottom of the bomb and got to all the wiring, then gestured for the pliers. "Have you ever disarmed a bomb before?"

" _If I say yes, will that make you feel better?_ " She cut out a few wires connected to a small circuit.

"No."

Tex tossed the pliers aside, grabbed the wire strippers and put them back into his hands. " _These are too big. Do you have a knife?_ " He produced a tiny pocketknife, which she seemed to eye with disdain. " _When we're done here, I'm taking you shopping for a real knife._ "

"Is that a promise?"

" _As much as I am capable of making._ " She gently pulled off the plastic to a few wires, exposing the copper underneath, and twisted specific pairs together. " _Okay, done. Help me up._ "

Jacob took her hand and pulled her to her feet before she put the circuitry in his palm. "What did you do?"

" _Disarmed it. Duh._ " The bomb squad finally arrived, weighed down by thick padding and boxes of gear. " _It's all yours_ ," she said as she gracefully bowed them into the room.

The two of them marched out of the building, Jacob leading the way. The lobby was now flooded with a layer of SWAT personnel, backed up by one of police. They parted to let Jacob and Tex pass. With no more bomb to worry about, Tex took off her helmet. "So, another day saved?" he said.

"Not quite yet."

"Tex!" Commissioner Gordon shouted, waving her over. Jacob returned to his commanding officer, and she wove through the crowd to get to him. "So?"

"It's only the first one. Poison Ivy probably made more of these. This one was supposed to be the warning or the test–"

Tex suddenly shut her mouth and her eyes and pupils went wide. Lodged in her neck was a fat dart. The next second, her knees buckled and she fell into Gordon. He kept her on her feet and pulled out the dart before any more venom or poison or whatever the mysterious substance was, could get into her bloodstream. "Sniper!" he shouted. "I have wounded!"

Raging through her blood, the toxin took hold of her eyes, her ear, her brain. All reason was lost, all hope was stripped from her, all sensation became pain and fear. _Scream, Jackie_ , her brain told her. _Scream._ She focused on the man holding her by her arm and stood up. "I'm not going back," she whispered.

"What are you talking about?" In her ears, his voice was muffled and distorted and his face melted like wax. "Tex?"

Her eyes blinked twice, trying to clear away the visions. But they would not leave. She took a step backwards, but Gordon was holding on too tightly. In response, she punched him in the stomach.

* * *

Batman finally freed his cape and tackled the assassin, who had a sick smile on his face. "What did you do?" he snarled.

He opened his hand and a dart fell out onto the floor. "Poison Ivy hasn't named it yet, but it's a compound based on Datura. If you hurry, you can save her."

"Her?"

"Texas. Jericho. Jackie. Whatever you call her nowadays. There's no antidote, but if you flush out her system, she'll feel a whole lot better. Or you can take me to jail and waste all that time. Your choice." Deadshot's smile hadn't faded a bit.

Batman took a pair of handcuffs off his belt and cuffed him to the nearest item that was bolted down. The best he could do was a filing cabinet. "If she dies-"

"You'll what? Kill me? I'd really like to see you try." Deadshot pulled another smoke bomb out of his pocket and threw it in the Dark Knight's direction. When the smoke cleared, the assassin was gone and he was left with an empty pair of handcuffs.

Batman climbed out the window and watched Jackie. She was stunned for a few moments. Then she suddenly punched the Commissioner and tore out of the thick crowd of police officers. Not a single one could hold onto her, and if they tried, they got a face full of fist. When she got to the edge of the crowd, she just kept running. He dove out of the building, spread his 'wings' and glided after her. At the same time, he had the communicator in his cowl dial her sister.

It didn't take long for her to answer. "Who is this?" Jenny demanded.

"It's me," Batman said in his usual growl. "Your sister was drugged with something called datura, and now she's gone rogue."

"Okay, wait. Drugged _with_ Datura or _by_ DATURA?" Her voice rose in panic.

"What's the difference?"

"Just tell me!"

"With. As far as I know, it's a plant toxin."

"Yes, I've heard of it," she said, cutting him off. "She's probably hallucinating right now. The way her mind is wired, she is very prone to flashbacks."

Batman focused a long-distance microphone on her, but all he picked up was her desperately trying to inhale some oxygen. Despite the condition her heart was in – and it visibly pained her to put any sort of exertion on it – she kept running full speed, looking over her shoulder every second or two. "I don't know what's going on in her head, but Jackie's scared and she needs your help."

She let out one cold bark of laughter. "Not gonna happen."

"What?"

"Jackie is seeing the two weeks she was missing, which includes the 'everyone's-trying-to-kill-her' phase. Which, come to think of it, didn't really end."

"What does that mean?" Jackie turned left into an alley, and Batman followed, keeping his distance in the rooftops.

"Let me put it this way. You have Jackie in bulletproof armor, who has super-strong hands, a brain that can read your moves faster than you can, and knows several lethal martial arts. And she thinks she's fighting people with the same or better advantages."

Translation: if she stays out of control, she will kill people. "How do I stop her?"

"Well you could try shooting her in the chest," she said sarcastically. "That seemed to work last time. Also, I hear EMP cannons are particularly effective."

"I don't want to kill her."

Jenny let out a sigh. "I'll see if I can send you some help, but try to keep her from killing anyone in the meantime, alright? Oh, and I need to have a discussion with you – "

Batman disconnected the call, got a bit of distance on Jackie, and came down to land in the street. She skidded to a stop and ran into Batman, stumbling backwards. He tried to catch her, but she turned out of his grasp. "No no no no no, it's not right, it's not right."

"Tex?" He followed her as she staggered back down the alley, bumping into a dumpster and a couple walls.

"Everything's going backwards, Beirut. I think I broke time."

"I'm not Beirut." He grabbed her shoulders, stopping her in her tracks. "I'm a friend."

With a sharp blow, she knocked his hands off her and followed that with right and left hooks to his face. Then she pulled him forward and kneed him in the stomach. While he was slightly dazed and bent over in pain, she pulled her fist back for another punch. "I don't have any friends."

Batman's hand shot up and caught her fist, twisting her arm away. "I don't want to fight you."

"No, you wouldn't, would you." Razor sharp claws sprang out of her fingers, slicing open his left hand. She swiped her fingers at his eyes, but he jumped back in time to keep his corneas intact. "I wouldn't want to fight me neither."

Batman let his armor absorb a few of her direct blows that hurt a lot more than he cared to admit to himself. "Jacqueline, stop! Listen to me!"

"I am done listening to you!" With bared teeth and bloodshot eyes, she let out a roar and unleashed everything she had. She grabbed his cape right by the shoulders, stepped onto his legs to pull herself up, punched him in the chin a couple times before headbutting him. Batman held onto her wrists and fell backwards, allowing her to tumble off and hit her head on the pavement before he swung her into a wall. The blow to her head didn't seem to faze her much and when she was about to hit the bricks, she twisted around so she kicked off them instead, bringing Batman down with a high tackle.

He managed to keep his footing and twist her arms around so he held her in a neck-lock. She could still breathe, but moving became a bit of a challenge. "You need to go to a hospital," he said.

Moving was a challenge, but not an insurmountable one. Tex twisted one of her hands out of his and elbowed him sharply in the stomach. The pain gave him pause for a second, but he didn't loosen his grip any until she aimed a little lower. When she felt enough of a give to get away, she grabbed his arm and threw him over her back.

With Batman on the ground, she straddled him, pinning his arms down with her knees. Her hands snaked around his throat hard enough for the booby trap in his cowl to start electrocuting her, but she couldn't feel it. " _Jackie!_ " he choked out. "You don't want to kill me!"

"No, I just want you to shut up." She took one hand off his throat and curled it, preparing to rip out his vocal chords.

Batman braced himself as Tex raised a steel-clawed hand for a killing blow. Suddenly, she was torn backwards with a hair-raising scream. She rolled off of him, clutching her head with fingers that nearly dug into her skull, and curled into a ball. As she rocked back and forth, her shrieks only raised in volume and frequency. Batman sat up and tried to grab her shoulders, shake her, ask her what was going on, but that only seemed to make her pain worse.

From the shadows only feet away, a tall man with slicked-back blond hair and a square face, dressed in a military-looking uniform stepped out to inspect Tex. In his hand, he held a device resembling a smart phone. He fiddled with it for a moment, which seemed to increase Tex's screaming. Batman lunged at the man, grabbing his coat and throwing him into the wall. "What are you doing to her?" Batman roared.

"Overloading her brain for a minute," he replied with infinite calm. "She'll be fine."

"That doesn't look fine to me!"

"Of course not. I'm not done. May I?" He gave a pointed look to Batman's hands on his collar. As soon as he was freed, he brushed invisible dust off his coat, then tapped some instructions into his device. The screaming stopped, Jackie was paralyzed, and her body relaxed enough that her fingers weren't pulling the hair out of her scalp. "There. Now she can't kill you."

Batman scooped her off the ground. Her eyes were wide and her face was blanched and clammy. "What did you do to her?"

He pocketed his device and turned to leave. "Nothing she hasn't handled before."

"Who are you?"

"Unimportant. Tell Jackie I said hello when she wakes up." With that, he disappeared into the shadows, leaving Batman to take Jackie to the hospital.


	40. Chapter Thirty-Nine

"He's going to be okay with this, right?" Imogen shuffled nervously on the front step of Wayne Manor with a pink rolling suitcase in her left hand and a handbag over her right shoulder.

I shrugged my backpack higher on my back. "Alfred said it was okay. And as long as we don't overstay our welcome, I can't possibly imagine why this would be awkward."

She sent me a short glare. "Quit being sarcastic. I already feel like a third wheel."

The great mahogany door opened at the touch of the indomitable Alfred. "Ms. Harkness. Ms. Watson. Welcome to Wayne Manor." He took Imogen's luggage, not mine I noted, and led us to a hall on the left and then upstairs. "The guest bedrooms have been prepared for you. The kitchen is just downstairs at the end of the hall on the right. Breakfast will be at 8."

"Thank you Alfred," I said. "Is Bruce here?"

He set Imogen's stuff down by the door in her room. "He isn't here at the moment. I'll try to locate him for you."

"I've been trying to call him tonight, but it's just gone straight to voicemail."

Alfred's face didn't change, not even betraying a hint of worry. "He must have turned off his mobile."

One of my eyebrows raised. "Does he do that often?"

"Not that I'm aware of. I've prepared this room for you." He gestured to the door across from Imogen's. "Pardon me." Then he left us alone.

Instead of going to my room, I joined Imogen in hers. She was busy exploring the room with its rich cherry wood furniture with deep green hues in the upholstery and bedding. One of the first things she did was jump onto the queen-sized bed to test out the fluffiness of the mattress, then roll off it and run into the bathroom. "Jenny, I have my own bathroom! It's got one of those fancy tubs with feet!"

I dropped my backpack on the floor. "Uh huh."

"Man, you sure landed a loaded boyfriend."

"Speaking of which, you don't find it odd that he's not here?"

"Maybe he went looking for you?"

Maybe. I collapsed in one of the armchair next to the window, and curled up with my knees under my chin. Now that I was at Wayne Manor, I thought it best to let Jackie know I was alright. I sent her a quick text letting her know that she was missing out on some fancy digs. Just after I sent it, my phone started ringing with a call from a blocked number. "Who is this?" I answered.

"It's me." I knew that deep voice a lot better than I wish I did. Batman. "Your sister was drugged with something called Datura, and now she's gone rogue."

My stomach churned at the name Datura and I straightened up in my seat. "Wait. Drugged with Datura, or _by_ DATURA."

"What's the difference?"

"Just tell me!"

"With. As far as I know, it's a plant toxin." Nearly missed that bit with the air whistling by. He must have been high up in the rooftops.

I calmed myself down. DATURA wasn't back for her. Good. "Yes, I've heard of it. She's probably hallucinating right now. The way her mind is wired, she is very prone to flashbacks." Datura, the plant, the lesser of two evils. Datura's effects can be permanent. I've heard of people who stopped being able to concentrate or think straight after one trip, and Jackie was probably overdosing.

"I don't know what's going on in her head, but Jackie's scared and she needs your help."

One short burst of laughter escaped my mouth. I couldn't help it. "Not gonna happen."

"What?"

I must sound so cruel right now, but this sort of thing has happened to her once before. "Jackie is seeing the two weeks she was missing, which includes the 'everyone's-trying-to-kill-her' phase. Which, come to think of it, didn't really end."

"What does that mean?"

"Let me put it this way. You have Jackie in bulletproof armor, who has super-strong hands, a brain that can read your moves faster than you can, and knows several lethal martial arts. And she thinks she's fighting people with the same or better advantages." In short, I'm not sure that he could stand a chance.

"How do I stop her?" Brave man. Stupid, but brave man.

"Well, you could try shooting her in the chest. That seemed to work last time." Helps that Deadshot knows exactly how to kill her. "Also, I hear EMP cannons are particularly effective."

"I don't want to kill her."

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. At this point, if she was as out of control as he thought she was, there was only one thing left to do. "I'll see if I can send you some help, but try to keep her from killing anyone in the meantime, alright?" That's when I remembered that I wanted to speak to Batman. "Oh, and I need to have a discussion with you!" Unfortunately, that's when he cut me off.

I jumped out of my chair and started for the door. "Jenny, where are you going?" Imogen said.

"Jackie's in trouble, I need to get to a hospital." There was someone in my phone's contact list that I never though I would have to call for help. I even included a DO NOT ANSWER next to his name in case he ever tried to get in touch with me first.

He picked up on the first ring. "Jenny. Never thought I'd hear from you."

"Jackie's been poisoned, and she's going to kill Batman." I picked up my backpack and swung it over my shoulder.

"So?"

"Stop her, Beirut. Do whatever it takes."

"Alright, Jenny. I'll find her." Then he hung up on me. I took the corner too sharp and ran into a dresser in the hallway, knocking a few photos off the top. Scrambling to pick them up, I briefly glanced over the pictures. A burnt photograph of a boy with his parents. A graduation photograph of a younger Bruce with Alfred's arm over his shoulders. A portrait of a kind woman with brown curled hair. An overexposed capture of the boy's first day at school with a friend of his with golden-brown braided pigtails. I made sure they were back safely on the dresser and sprinted down the stairs.

Alfred caught me right as I was heading out the door. "Is everything alright?" he asked.

"Jackie's in trouble. I'm going to the hospital."

"Which one?"

I threw my hands up. "I haven't the foggiest. Whichever one Batman drops her off at."

"I'll start making some calls, let you know if she turns up."

"Thank you, Alfred. Oh, did you find Bruce?"

"Yes, he was working on a project at Wayne Enterprises and got stuck when the building went into lock down."

Project? What project? Whatever. Need to find Jackie. "Okay. Tell him to call me when he gets a chance." I dashed out the door, jumped into Imogen's car, and sped off to the gridlocked streets of Gotham City.

* * *

"I'm looking for a patient named Jacqueline Harkness. She would have come in recently. She's been poisoned. I'm her older sister."

The young nurse with the cutesy teddy bear scrubs did a quick look through the patient files. "I'm sorry, I don't see anyone by that name."

"She might not be coherent enough to give you her name."

"We would have recognized Tex," she assured me. Right.

A commotion rose just outside the ER with the arrival of a big black tank. I joined the crowd of doctors and paramedics going out to meet the noise. By the time I made it through the wall of scrubs, Batman had already climbed out of the Tumbler and pulled Tex out of the passenger seat. She wasn't moving, not even to groan in pain.

"I told you to stall her, not kill her," I said.

"There was another man. He did this to her." Someone brought him a stretcher to set Jackie down on.

"Oh, good. You met Beirut." I was only half sarcastic. "Thank you, Batman. She'll be fine."

He nodded once and pushed his way back out of the crowd. I raced to catch up with the doctors while Batman revved up his engine and drove away. One of the paramedics stood in my path, blocking me from following them. "Ma'am, we need you to let us do our jobs and wait outside."

"I am the only person who can open her armor. I will undress her, and then I will leave you to your work." I pushed him aside and caught up with the others before I got a response from him. Like he could keep me from my little sister.

* * *

"How's Jackie?" Imogen's voice was slightly muffled by a cookie on the other end of the phone line.

"She's fine," I lied. I tucked the sheets tighter around her even though she didn't respond. Even unconscious, her face was creased by an underlying pain. Beirut did something to her brain that shut off most of her motor functions while keeping her in a constant state of agony. She would remember this clearly when she woke up.

"How long will she be in the hospital?"

"I don't know. They've got her on a saline drip right now. Not a whole lot they can do for a Datura overdose anyway."

"Are you coming back to the mansion? It's kind of lonely with just Alfred."

"What are you talking about? You love Alfred." A male nurse stopped by the room with a large garbage bag for me. I nodded my thanks as he turned to check Jackie's vitals. "I don't know when I'll get back. I've got an errand to run first."

"What could you possibly have to do when Gotham's in lockdown?"

I shoved Jackie's boots inside the garbage bag along with the rest of her armor. Thank goodness it was a heavy-duty bag. The whole outfit was heavier than I remembered. "I'll see you later." I hung up on her and slipped my phone back into my purse. While my hand was in there, I touched the three DVDs from Vicki just to reassure myself that they were there, just like the last twelve times I checked. I never got around to putting them in Bruce's safe, so I was kind of paranoid of getting them stolen out from under my nose.

Before I sealed up the bag, I dug through Jackie's jacket pockets and returned triumphantly with her house keys. Imogen's apartment would be safe enough for her armor, but Jackie still had hiding places that an angry mob tearing the place apart couldn't find. So I swung the bag over my back and prepared to leave.

"Do you want us to call you if she wakes up?" the nurse asked.

I checked the time on my phone. "She should be up in fifteen minutes. Might want to keep some restraints on hand just in case the Datura is still in effect."

* * *

The door was new. It would have to be after what Jervis did to it. Some police tape was still on the frame. Guess Jackie never bothered to take it down when she came home from jail. The new lock was broken too, so Jackie fixed that with some metal plates, a hinge, and a padlock. Nothing says 'ghetto' quite like a door lock that can be picked with a pair of bolt cutters. I unlocked the door, stepped inside, and locked the door back up with a similar system on the other side.

Inside, I tried turning on the lights only to find that all the bulbs were shattered. The moonlight and streetlights illuminated the graffiti on the walls anyway. _Cop Killer, Murderer, Get out!,_ and a wide variety of even more unpleasant language surrounded me. As far as I knew, Jackie was still coming back here to sleep under the hateful cursing of her enemies.

Good thing most of my stuff was moved out before Jackie's secret identity was blown. I left her an old couch I was going to get rid of anyway, and a bed. The couch had been torn to shreds and broken in half. The kitchen was beaten to death with sledgehammers. Although Jackie seemed to have made the best out of it with a hobo stove in the middle of the floor.

I walked carefully down the hall to Jackie's room. I should have been seeing triggers for a panic attack, but this place didn't look at all like the apartment where I was attacked. It felt like the home of someone who was resigned to the abuse and hatred the world was giving her.

In Jackie's room, the mattress was gone and the bed frame had been thrown against the wall. So she slept on a bedroll instead where the bed used to be. A cardboard box in the corner held her few meager belongings. I poked through her clothes and uncovered a small black chunk of machinery. The wasp!

I picked it up and searched it for a power switch, but the touch of my hand seemed to turn it on. The wasp rose out of my hands and shined a flashlight in my eyes. "You still have the AI installed, don't you."

It tipped the light down and up. It nodded at me.

"So you can hear me. Okay, so where does Jackie hide her armor?"

The wasp flew back to the cardboard box, hovering over it.

"Seriously? She didn't hide it in a box."

In an attempt to get through to me, it ran into the box, trying to push it aside. Oh, the floorboards. Of course. I moved the box aside, found a small space between the boards and managed to fit my fingers in it. I pulled it up, lifting about five floorboards attached in a square. The hatch revealed a small hollow in the floor. I adjusted the wasp's light so it shone into the hole where I could use it.

The whole bottom of the compartment was covered in papers. Not surprising as Jackie writes a lot, but these papers were just printed articles. I pulled out a handful of them and a couple batarangs fell out of the pile. These articles … yes, these were _my_ articles, the ones that were supposed to be on the floor of my room. I flipped through them one at a time. My notes were scribbled on them, and even worse, I found a rough draft of Batman's confession that had been pinned to my wall.

" _Jackie_ stole them?" My throat got tight. "Why would she do that?"

What was the result of her theft? I wasn't slowed down any. Instead, I became more protective and secretive with my research. I hid my DVDs from her and Imogen and Batman. If she wasn't slowing me down, then she was keeping it away from herself because I'm close. I'm very close to solving everything, even Batman's identity and she would do anything to not know who Batman is.

I whipped my laptop out of my backpack, plugged it into an outlet that still worked, and popped in the disk with the data from the SWAT operation. I didn't care about how the Joker was taken down. I just needed to know the whereabouts of Batman and Commissioner Gordon at the time. Batman strung up the Joker and was at the Prewitt building until nearly the very end. What was notable was that Gordon got a call and left the scene, transferring leadership to his second in command, _before_ Batman was done. A whole twenty minutes before Batman left. So the Dark Knight was not the catalyst to the tragedy on 52nd street.

The only other player was Harvey Dent. The last confirmed sighting of Dent was the security footage from Gotham General Hospital, so that was the next disk that wen tin. I skipped forward to the evacuation. The film took about two pictures a second and the picture quality was horrible, but it was better than nothing. Two cops in front of a door identified his room. As the chaos rose, one of the policemen left for whatever reason. Then the lone cop was approached by a nurse in an old fashioned hat and uniform. The cop was as suspicious of her as I was. She kind of pushed him into the room, the shadow of a gun hidden behind her clipboard. Neither of them were seen in the next few minutes. The next time I saw a cop, the first one had come back after the floor had been cleared. He went inside, there was a muzzle flash as the door closed, then no more.

I waited several more minutes for the nurse to reappear. She was missing her hat and the mask around her face. I paused the feed. Based on the width of the nurse's shoulders, that was definitely a man. The hair was different too; stringy and greasy. Plus his face had black eyes like a skeleton and a red grin. The Joker. The Joker had been in the same room as Harvey Dent. No one mentioned the Joker had anything to do with Dent after he kidnapped the DA. A minute later, another man left the room dressed in a suit. It could only have been one person: Dent. And he had a gun in his left hand. A basic revolver. He left, keeping his face away from the cameras, looking very determined. Soon after, the feed was abruptly cut off as the hospital exploded.

Harvey Dent used to work at Internal Affairs. He would have been used to finding dirty cops just like the ones that turned him and Rachel Dawes over to the Joker. It was only after this point that the cops started getting shot, so he was getting revenge. But what could the Joker have possibly said to convince Harvey Dent to not kill him? There's no way Dent had a gun when he was brought to the hospital, but he left with one. The only possible answer was the Joker.

I sat back and let this information sink in. I have proof that Batman is innocent. Well, strong circumstantial evidence, anyway. But enough that I can confidently say that Jackie was right.

But there was one more disk. Well, more proof couldn't hurt. I would need help, though. I can sign fluently, but I cannot lip read. I've tried learning several times, but it's just not something I could pick up. Mom can, though. So I called Dad while I opened up Skype.

"Hi Jenny." There was a touch of relief in his voice.

"Hi Dad. Can I talk to Mom?"

"Is everything okay in Gotham?"

"I'm fine." I deliberately didn't say anything about Jackie. "Tell Mom to get on Skype."

"The news was saying some nuclear waste was stolen –"

"Mooooommmmm ..."

With a little grumbling, Dad fetched my mother. Thirty seconds later, Mom's beautiful face graced my computer screen. _Good Evening_ , she signed. _How are you doing? Are you okay?_

 _I'm fine_ , I replied. _You saw the news?_

She nodded. _Where are you?_

_Safe. Everything's under control. I need your help._

_Okay. What do you need?_

_Can you read the lips of two men for me?_

She raised an eyebrow at how deliberately vague I was being. _Who?_

_Batman and the Joker. It's a police interrogation video. No sound._

Mom blinked in surprise a couple times. _What?_

_It will help Jackie. I want to prove that Batman is innocent._

She shook her head. _Fine._

So I started up the footage and switched Skype from my camera to my desktop so mom could see it. It started up with the Joker sitting at a table with only a desk lamp providing any light. The footage was too grainy to really see what the Joker was saying. Commissioner Gordon came into the room, sat in front of the Joker, and started up a conversation.

_I can't see what they're saying._

But the Commissioner only stayed long enough to unlock the Joker's handcuffs and leave.

 _He said something about, 'Good cop, Bad cop.'_ It was easier for Mom to just transcribe what she saw through text, so she was typing it out to me.

Right after the Commissioner left, the lights flooded the room, revealing the presence of Batman standing right behind him. He slammed the Joker's head into the table and I saw Mom jump in shock. Now we could see both of them, but the camera was only pointed at the Joker, so he was the only one we could read.

Batman sat down in Gordon's chair and began his own interrogation right after punching the Joker in the hand. I decided to let Mom just send me the bits of dialogue she could understand while I watched the body language of the two in the room. The Joker seemed at ease in his confinement and nearly laughed when Batman abused him, like the whole thing was a joke he was in control of. Batman also thought he was in control. He was like a storm or a fury forced to be bottled up and subsided for just a little bit. I could tell it would take just a little too much of a spark to set him off, and he was playing with a matchbook.

At, " _I'm not a monster; I'm just ahead of the curve_ ," Batman pulled the Joker out of his chair by his collar. By the looks of it, he had lost control, but that bottled fury was still there. He was trying a new tactic to get the Joker to talk. He slammed the Joker against the wall. More difficult to read them from the side, but at least we could see both of them.

" _I have one rule,"_ said Batman.

" _Then that's the rule you'll have to break to know the truth_ ," the Joker replied.

" _Which is?"_

" _That the only sensible way to live in this world is without rules. And tonight you're going to break your one rule."_

" _I'm considering it."_

" _There's only minutes left, so you're going to have to play my little game if you wanna save one of them."_

" _Them?"_

At this point, I saw a change in demeanor in Batman. He didn't know there were two people in danger. Harvey Dent and Rachel Dawes, and he didn't start worrying until he knew that Dawes was also in play.

" _You know, for a while, I thought you really were Dent. The way you threw yourself after her,"_ the Joker taunted.

That was enough to really set Batman off. I paused the video before Batman started the beatdown I knew was coming. Dawes is the key. Both Batman and Dent seemed to love her enough that when she died, one went on a rampage and the other –

An image of Rachel Dawes as I had seen a hundred times in the newspapers came to mind, but framed in silver and kept on a dresser next to photos of other loved ones. Right next to a photo of her and her best friend from childhood. Bruce wasn't just honoring the memory of a best friend that passed away or else he would have just kept the one photo from before they parted ways. He loved Rachel Dawes too.

Mom was waving at me, trying to get my attention. I didn't snap out of it until Dad came in and shouted, "Jenny!"

 _Sorry,_ I signed. _Thank you, Mom. You've been very helpful._

 _What did you find out?_ She asked.

 _Batman's innocent. It was Harvey Dent. Goodbye._ I shut off my computer, threw the papers and Jackie's armor into the hole in the floorboards, and got out of there.

* * *

"What do I do? What do I do? What do I do?" I paced back and forth in Imogen's room while she watched me from the comfort of her bed.

"I can't help you if you don't tell me what's wrong."

I ran my fingers through my hair, nearly pulling some of it out. "I know something I shouldn't know, and it's very dangerous if anyone finds out that I know it, and now I need to figure out if I should tell a certain individual that I know this secret."

Imogen gave me a blank look. "Did you figure out Batman's secret identity?"

"What, no!" I answered way too quickly.

"Because after what happened to Jackie, I can't imagine that there's anything more dangerous to know in this city."

I climbed onto the bed and sat down next to her. "Sometimes I forget how smart you can be."

"How smart I _am_ , you mean." She gave me a sympathetic pat on the back. "Look, it's not that hard. If Batman wanted you to know his secret identity, he would have told you. Just don't say anything and pretend like you were wrong."

"Wrong? I'm never wrong. I can keep a secret. It'll just be like Tex all over again." Except this time the vigilante is my boyfriend. I can't blame him for not trusting me with something this big just yet, but a part of me hurts that he never told me.

"But, like, twelve times worse if he gets caught by the police."

"I'll just let him tell me. On his own time." The nice thing about solving mysteries is telling everyone the solution. That's why I hate secrets. But I'll keep this one for Bruce.


	41. Chapter Forty

_Watch out. Ivy's threat not dirty bombs_ , read Commissioner Gordon's text. _She's gassing the city with an unknown chemical._

Hence the stolen chemicals. The Leaves of Three were going to spread their toxin over the entire city. Poisoning Tex was only a demonstration of this new drug's effects and there was no cure. By taking credit for stealing the nuclear waste, Poison Ivy had sent the police on a wild goose chase.

The Leaves of Three claimed six dirty bombs were active. There were probably the same number of toxin dispersal devices, and Tex took one out already. Still, there wasn't much of a point trying to track each one down. Batman needed to track down a source.

Blackgate prison was supposed to be impenetrable and inescapable. Batman alighted on a guard tower and chuckled at the thought. It's secure … for the most part. When the guards looked away, one of them yawning, he darted down through the shadows and into the main building with the holding cells. Bailing out Jackie had the added bonus of giving him a better idea of the layout.

In one dark hallway with a row of cells, twelve inmates lay sleeping. One in particular, who had neatly combed dark brown hair, a lean frame, and skin that hadn't seen sunlight in moths, had his own cell and decorated his wall with art projects and drawings, many of them featuring the Guy Fawkes mask. Batman knocked on the bars. "Nygma."

The man opened his eyes, yawned, and stretched his arms before sitting up and rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. "You don't call, you don't write, you don't visit."

He glared at the Riddler from the shadows with his arms crossed. "You sold your designs for a neurotoxin dispersal device to the Leaves of Three."

"Allegedly." He waved away the motion dismissively.

"How do I get in touch with them?"

"Really? You thought if you just asked nicely I would just tell you?" He stood up and mirrored Batman's stance. "That's not how this works."

"They're going to gas all of Gotham. That includes Blackgate prison. You'll be a victim of your own device."

"Hmm. A deathtrap scenario. I've always wanted to break out of a prison." He gave a malicious grin, showing too many of his bleached-white teeth. "I'm only in here because I want to be. Remember?"

Batman took one step closer. "Even if you get out of Blackgate, you won't be able to escape the city before the gas is released."

"Haven't you ever heard of gas masks?" He leaned back to a comical degree in an exaggerated sigh of disappointment. "I deal in information, Batsy. Data for data. You tell me something I desperately need to know, and I'll give you the address I sent the designs to."

"Depends. What exactly do you want to know?"

"Jenny Harkness, your partner's brilliant sister. Is she single?"

The question gave him pause for a moment as his brain processed the request. It wasn't something he expected the Riddler wanted to know. The man wasn't grinning; he looked entirely serious. Furthermore, this was something the tabloids had been covering for the last few weeks. "Aren't you allowed newspapers?"

"The regular ones. New York Times, Gotham Chronicle, Wallstreet Journal. We don't get tabloids or celebrity news. I'm hopelessly behind on pop culture."

He considered answering for another bit, but something was still off with the request. "How do you know that you need a tabloid?"

Nygma tapped his nose with a finger, knowing he was caught. "I never give you enough credit. Should have made my move earlier. But _Bruce Wayne?_ What does she see in that blithering idiot?"

"Tell you what. I won't tell Tex that you're trying to stalk her sister from jail if you give me Pamela Isley's address."

"I nearly killed her the last time we met. How is that a threat?"

Batman knocked on the bars again, pointing out that he was still a ward of the state. "You're not exactly in a tenable position. You saw what she did to Jervis Tetch."

He scoffed at him. "You can't even threaten me yourself?"

"Tex gets first dibs. Then I get a turn." Nygma opened his mouth to rebut that, but found nothing to say and shut his mouth with a nod that said, 'touché.' So he found a pencil that was still working, scribbled down an address on a slip of paper and handed it to Batman. He glanced at it for a second before his eyes narrowed again. "This is an e-mail address."

"Of course. I do all of my business electronically. All you have to do is trace the IP which will lead you to a physical location."

"Which you've already done."

It took a bit of a stare-down, but Nygma finally took back the paper, wrote down a proper address and handed it over. "Wayne must have a great personality," he mumbled. "Or maybe Jenny's secretly a gold digger."

Batman's hand shot through the bars, grabbed the Riddler's neck and slammed him against the wall. "Jenny's life is none of your business," he snarled. "You go anywhere near her and I'll see to it that you're not only thrown in solitary, I will make sure you regret ever crossing me." He pushed him away, letting him fall back into the other wall and stalked back down the hall.

"Always a pleasure, Batman!"

* * *

The address was on the north side of Gotham near the football stadium. The house was an upper-middle class one registered to a numbered corporation. It wasn't linked to Environmental Energy Solutions, Pamela Isley's company, but with some patience and waiting in the shadows, a car pulled up and a red headed woman stepped out. Pamela Isley looked around, searching for something suspicious in the dark recesses of the street. A cat running across the road prompted her to pull out a gun and sweep the area. Seeing no one, she raced inside.

Batman sneaked into the house through the balcony on the second floor, entering a bedroom that was furnished comfortably albeit sparsely. While Isley hadn't turned on the lights in the house, she was being very quiet which made it difficult to be stealthy. A creak on the stairs told him she was coming upstairs. He stood behind the door of the bedroom just as Isley rushed inside. In her panic, she didn't check her room for intruders. She pulled a suitcase out from the closet, threw it on the bed, and started emptying out her dresser by the handful.

Two or three trips to and from her dresser, she spotted Batman approaching her from the shadows. She screamed, muffling her cry with her own hands, then fumbled for her gun in the back of her pants. He grabbed her wrist, twisted her arm, and with a hand on her shoulder, forced her to the ground. "I have a few questions and I'm not leaving until I get the answers," he said.

To his surprise, she started spilling. "There are six dispersal devices around the city. Tex disabled one. The only way they can be triggered is by remote control. No booby traps, no timers. There's no cure to the Datura compound, but it's not lethal in the dose it's at. At most, it will seriously disorient people, maybe cause some nightmarish hallucinations, and some of the effects might be permanent. The map for the devices is in my safe in the floor by the nightstand; the combination is 36 28 38."

Helpful. Unusually so. "Who's trying to kill you, Ms. Isley? Deadshot?"

"No, Deadshot was paid in full. This man … he's mad that we took credit for stealing the nuclear waste."

"Who is he? The police can protect you."

She shook her head. "He wants to tell you himself. Has this whole plan ready. He'd kill me if I ruined it." She tried to turn her head to look him in the eye, but in her position, she couldn't get far. "He's insane! You have to help me!"

"You're in the process of gassing all of Gotham, you hired an assassin to kill me, and your toxin sent Tex to the hospital. Why should I?"

"I just wanted to scare Gotham into reform, not kill everyone! And Deadshot was just supposed to keep you from interfering. I'm sorry about Tex, but that was his idea."

"Where is he now?"

"Setting up the last device on the train. He won't set them off until midnight."

The clock on the wall read 11:32. Still some time to stop Deadshot. He took a pair of handcuffs from his belt and cuffed Isley's wrists behind her back. Then he found a phone, dialed 911 and left it on the ground by her head. "Police will be here soon." Before he left, he opened the safe and took the map. Gordon would be interested in it.

* * *

Central Station, where all of Gotham's public transportation vehicles slept, was quieter than a graveyard and just as dark and gloomy. If Deadshot was finishing the last of Ivy's plans, he would have to start one of the train cars and drive it through Gotham. The time was 11:47. Not much left to go, but there was always the chance Deadshot could set everything off early if he was spooked.

The only sounds in the train yard were the cars being put in their places for the night, the clacking of the huge machines changing tracks, and the repairmen doing their thing. The last train car to be put away was waiting on the tracks at the end of the lot with a bit of light coming from underneath it. Batman approached it quietly, listening to the metal hitting the underside of the train and wrenches screwing in bolts. Three feet away from the source of the noises, they abruptly stopped. Batman did too. A moment of silence waiting for the other to make the first move passed. Then there was the _snick_ of a safety being switched off on a gun.

Batman leaped onto the train just as a shot aimed at his feet ricocheted off another train car. While the shooter crawled out from under the car, Batman pried open the doors and slipped inside. He made a beeline for the control room of the train, turned it on, and put it in reverse. The train drifted backwards on the track. Deadshot managed to get out before he was crushed, get inside, and fired at Batman's back. Fortunately, years of gang activity had prompted the installation of bulletproof doors to protect the drivers.

The two of them were jolted as the back of the train passed over a switch point and fell off the tracks, coming to a halt. With the train now effectively useless, Batman broke open the windshield, escaped out of the front of the train and took refuge in the voluminous shadows, letting Deadshot come to him.

The mercenary tore open the doors of the train and ran out into the rail yard. He put on his headpiece with the eye scope and scanned the area. If it was as good as Tex's helmet's eyes, Batman would be found almost immediately. Deadshot's eye locked onto an incoming object right before a batarang hit it dead center. With a roar, he tore off the shattered targeting equipment and threw it away. "I can still see without it, Batman!" He tore off his coat, freeing up both his wrist mounted pistols, and plunged into the darkness.

But here in the pitch black where every movement in the shadows looked like a target and the untrained eye played tricks on its master, the Dark Knight had the upper hand as he wrapped the darkness around him like a comforting shield. The labyrinth of train cars amplified and bounced around sounds, turning its victims around in circles. Settling trains sounded like a gun being cocked. Labormen far in the distance seemed much closer. A rat scurried out from behind a rail to the next one and was felled by a single panicked shot.

Batman silently scaled one of the trains, keeping as low to the roof as he could. His quarry was taking the dirt path one step at a time, keeping his ears and eyes open to anything that could be the Dark Knight. There were a lot of possibilities, but it seemed that Deadshot had not picked up on Batman's movements yet. He prowled along just behind the assassin, mirroring his starts and stops. Then Deadshot made a turn to the left and into some overhead lighting. A batarang felled the dim lights, but Batman's movement was enough to give him something to aim at. Three bullets whizzed past his arm before he ducked out of sight again.

"I can play this game all night, Batman!" He whirled around and fired at a shadow of a moving train. "I don't think you'll last past midnight, though."

"You want to bet?"

Deadshot stopped, certain that the voice was coming from right above him, and aimed up only to find the Batman flying down from the ceiling. He fired a flurry of bullets, not sure if any of them hit him. Glints of steel flashed in the Batman's hands. They ran along Deadshot's arms before he registered any pain, then took him down to the ground. Batman quickly tumbled away back into the shadows as Deadshot regained his footing and tried to shoot at everything around him. Tried to, being the key word since the pistols on his left wrist had been destroyed and fallen off due to Batman's batarangs, leaving a deep cut in his arm.

While he waited for Deadshot to stop firing haphazardly, Batman pressed himself against the back side of a train and checked for injuries. A sharp pain in his side as he inhaled and a glove that came back covered in blood when he touched it told him enough. A bullet made it through the plates of his armor. Not much he could do about it now. He wadded up some gauze from his utility belt and stuffed it into the hole to try to stem the flow. Now to work through the pain.

Knowing that Batman was probably re-thinking his tactics, Deadshot took the moment of silence as an opportunity to run and find better ground. Batman followed him out of the train yard, steadily gaining on the fifty yards the assassin had on him. With a jump and two practiced steps, Deadshot cleared the barbed-wire-topped fence surrounding the trains' power plant, with Batman not three feet behind him.

As soon as he heard the Batman land, he spun around with a Reuger in each hand and emptied the magazines, firing blindly into the night. But out of twenty shots, not a single bullet managed to hit the Batman as he ducked and darted wildly in the shadows before disappearing behind a monitoring station to catch his breath. The gauze was jostled out of place, so he put it back in along with a bit more padding and some tape to keep it in place. Already the fabric was soaked through with blood. At this rate, he wouldn't last long playing Deadshot's game before he passed out.

"I'll give you this," Deadshot said as he switched out the magazines. "It's not often someone tries to stop me by running right at my guns. Jackie has, but she's pretty much bulletproof."

Crouched behind a crate, Batman waited as the assassin slowly explored the new ground, hunting for him. There were plenty overhead lights, too many to take out with batarangs without giving away his position, but not so many that there weren't any shadows to make use of. Even in dim lighting, it could be disorienting.

Deadshot heard a crunch of gravel to his right and fired at the sound only to find an empty space. An instant later, Batman rushed him from behind, punching him in the kidneys to double him over. He tried to defend himself, throwing out an elbow to fell his attacker, but Batman was already in front of him. Blows to his face to make him dizzy, a box to his ears to make them ring, and punches to his solar plexus to make it hard to move. Out of desperation, Deadshot dropped to the ground and rolled away behind a generator. In the scuffle, Batman had managed to steal his belt that was loaded with extra ammunition and a couple grenades. He tossed it aside, out of reach of the both of them.

A moment to catch his breath, then Deadshot was running again. This time towards the power lines at the edge of the compund. He vanished behind one of the towers leading the lines out of the station and started climbing it with the agility of a squirrel. Batman followed, clutching the wound at his side so the running didn't hurt it as much. He briefly considered using his grappling cable to get ahead of Deadshot, but with all the live electrical wires, he decided he didn't want to get electrocuted. So he climbed up the tower by hand.

Halfway up the ascent, Batman understood why Deadshot had chosen to climb up this way. The tower rumbled and shook under his grip as a train approached them. Deadshot leaped off the tower, landing on the front end of the last departing train for the other side of town. With no other choice, Batman caught the next car with a grapple and pulled himself up just as the train was picking up speed to race above the streets of Gotham.

Deadshot crouched on the roof, keeping his head below the overhang. Batman pulled himself up to the top, but three stray shots forced his head back down. Sitting between train cars was a dangerous place to stay if he planned on staying alive through the turns. Carefully, he crawled along the side, getting closer to Deadshot who was trying to open a hatch on the roof without being decapitated. With one of his miniature grenades, Batman burst open the window and climbed inside the empty car.

A minute later, the assassin managed to tear off the hatch and drop inside. For a moment, he thought he was safe enough to reload the guns on his right wrist and in his hands, but that idea came crashing down when he not only realized that he was missing his ammo belt, but that there was wind coming in from a broken window. "Crap."

Batman appeared from the shadows in front of him with batarangs fanned out between his fingers. Deadshot aimed at him with both Reugers only to have the shuriken fly right at his face. One struck the barrel of the gun in his right hand just as he fired. The gun nearly exploded, sending shrapnel flying everywhere in a five foot radius, including his hand. With a surprised shout, he dropped his guns and grabbed his injured hand to stop the bleeding. Then Batman came at him with fists flying.

His training finally kicked in and Deadshot managed to block most of what the Batman threw at him. They both had the advantage and disadvantage of a narrow fighting ground. With nowhere to move, it made attacking difficult, but also kept the opponent from moving around much. Deadshot tried firing at Batman with his last working gun, but in the close quarters, he could simply block his shot like he was fighting a hand-to-hand battle instead of a gun-to-batarang one.

Using the train seats as leverage, Deadshot landed a kick that had Batman stumbling backwards. Another punch in his stomach put him doubled over in absolute pain. Deadshot noticed the blood that transferred to his fist. "Looks like that really hurt. Don't tell me there's a hole in your armor." Another kick to the same area produced similar results.

Despite the stabbing in his side, Batman would not let the assassin beat him down any further than he had. He grabbed the seats and pulled himself back up to stop Deadshot's next blow in its tracks and punched him in the neck. This left him momentarily gasping for air while trying to aim a desperate shot at the Dark Knight. A couple bullets glanced off his armor, but otherwise did no harm.

The train lurched to a halt as it reached its first stop. Taking advantage of the opportunity, Deadshot rammed Batman in the chest with his shoulder, driving him back towards the door, before he jumped onto the seats and jumped back out onto the roof. Batman scrambled to race after him. He got a grappling cable ready as he was not ready for another chase, and followed him out. On the roof, Deadshot had backed up for a running jump.

On the other side of the platform was a straight drop hundreds of feet down. Fifty feet from the train was the roof of the Boxlightner building. The train was ringing its gong, readying to leave, and Deadshot was about to get off at this stop. "Deadshot!" Batman shouted. "You won't make it!"

"I might!" And then with a mighty bound, he leaped off the train.

Batman shot his grappling cable at the other building, following him in this chase that would probably mean death for the both of them. Deadshot seemed to sail across the distance as if he had developed some sort of super strength. It looked like he would make it for one split second if he willed his body to fly further. But Batman calculated his trajectory and knew it wouldn't be possible. He swung low enough to reach the assassin and grabbed his arm.

With both hands occupied, Batman was unable to slow their swing with his cape, and the two of them nearly crashed into the side of the building. Instead, they landed in a tangled heap on one of the ledges. Deadshot kicked his rescuer off and the two of them hastened to get back to their feet. They were at a standoff with no place to run and no place to find cover.

Smiling, Deadshot raised his gun, leveling it at Batman's heart. "Well, this was fun, I have to admit. No one's ever given me this good of a run for my money."

"You haven't won yet," Batman growled.

"You're bleeding from a gaping bullet hole in your side, I have a gun, there's nowhere to run, and I'm betting your suit can't take a straight shot. Am I wrong?"

He palmed a batarang in his left hand. "You're going to jail for the rest of your life."

"That's funny. I don't see that in my future."

Then, as if an invisible handkerchief had been dropped, both men released their missiles. Batman's batarang flew at his opponent's face, and Deadshot fired, only to get a _click_ from his specialty gun. Nimble fingers caught the batarang before it could hit home, but the disappointment was clear on his face.

"You took my bullets. Now I have to do this the hard way," he sighed.

"Not necessarily." Then he threw a small grenade at his feet.

Deadshot's footing slipped just enough that his arms spun wildly to catch his balance, but it wasn't enough to keep him from falling backwards. Batman grabbed the front of his coat to keep him from plunging to his otherwise deserved death. While the assassin was still dangerously close to the edge, he searched through his pockets, throwing out extra ammo and spare guns, until he found the detonator. As he started to pull Deadshot back to safer ground, the assassin panicked. "No, wait! Don't!"

"You're about to die."

"But I haven't felt this alive in years." He put a hand over his heart. "It's racing."

Batman yanked him back in, letting him faceplant into the gravel on the roof. Then he grabbed him around the waist and jumped off, controlling their descent with a grappling cable. Once on the ground, he cuffed Deadshot's hands behind his back and gave him a blow that left him unconscious long enough for Batman to hog-tie him.

Batman set the detonator on the ground and destroyed it with one deliberate and satisfying _stomp!_ Current crisis averted.

A press of a key fob summoned the sleeping dragon known as the Tumbler II. It tore through the fence, sped across the cement, and drifted to a stop right in front of its master with the hood open. "Be good," he told Deadshot before hauling him inside and taking the wheel. A quick stop at the MCU to deliver Deadshot and a map of the gas bombs around Gotham, and then he would be home, somewhat save and sound.

* * *

The Tumbler II pulled into the cave, faithfully carrying its driver to the end of the road. Batman opened the hatch and managed to pull himself out halfway before his body betrayed him and collapsed over the side. His vision started to fade and blood was rushing in his ears. He could barely catch enough breath to call out to Alfred for help. In his adrenaline fueled state, his brain noted that the cockpit looked like a murder scene, but only on the left side. Then –

"Bruce? Oh God, you're bleeding." It wasn't Alfred. A pair of slender arms slid under his arms and wrapped around his chest before pulling him out of the Tumbler and onto the floor. It took her considerable effort to do so. Yes, he was sure it was a she, although he was still in denial about who she was. Small, but nimble hands checked the wound in his side. "You've been shot. Guess you already knew that. Alfred! Alfred I need help!"

While Alfred took his time – or maybe he was rushing; time slows down in cases of trauma – the hands did their best to stem the flow of blood. Batman opened his eyes to spy a head of blonde curls looking down at his wound. He wanted to reach out a hand and check her face to see who she was, but his limbs wouldn't follow his commands.

His sight was growing foggier. He blinked hard to clear it away and saw his kindly old butler looking down at him. "Help me get him on the table," he instructed the woman. He took Batman's upper body and she his feet, and they raised him off the ground and onto a cool metal table.

"Bruce, can you hear me?" The woman's face came back into his line of sight. Her blue eyes were creased with worry. Her hands brushed over his cowl as if shakily brushing back dark brown strands of hair. "We'll get that bullet out of you. Well, at the very least, we'll sew you back up. Well, Alfred will. I'm no good at this sort of thing."

A pair of cold scissors cut away the plates of armor obstructing his wound. Alfred discarded the kevlar and sopped up some of the blood to get a clearer view of the wound. "Jenny, forceps."

Jenny obeyed every order to the letter, fetching Alfred tools and sponges, holding some surgical tools while he searched deeper for the bullet, and holding Bruce's hand when the pain became so much that noise escaped through his clenched teeth.

Alfred dropped a painstakingly extracted bullet into a silver pan. Jenny handed him a threaded needle for him to start sewing Bruce back together. "He's lost a lot of blood," she remarked.

"There are packets of blood in the fridge behind you."

She pulled off her latex gloves with a snap and checked the fridge. "No there aren't. There's one, but it's over a month old."

"It'll have to do," he grimaced.

"No it won't. I'm O negative, universal donor." Bruce saw her roll up a sleeve out the corner of his eye.

Alfred stopped what he was doing for a moment. "Are you sure?"

She nodded, but he spied a nearly imperceptible tremor going through her. Without a word, she fetched the appropriate supplies – needles, medical tubing, and a length of rope. Then she hopped up onto the table next to his knees and tied off her upper arm with one hand and her teeth. Alfred must have given her an odd glance because she declared defensively, "I had a weird semester a couple years ago. Phlebotomy class volunteer. I'm clean."

In any case, Alfred slid a needle into one of her veins and another into one of Bruce's. Unconventional, but it would have to do for now. He cleaned up the operation table, letting her feed Batman her blood. After a few minutes, he disconnected them and wrapped bandages around both their arms before helping him get out of his armor.

Bruce raised his head off the table, feeling somewhat strengthened by the whole operation. "About time you figured it out."

A forced smile flitted across her lips. "Guess so. So, you stopped Deadshot?"

Something wasn't right. She was deliberately steering the conversation elsewhere. "Jenny, what's wrong?"

"Well, you're bleeding all over the place, for one thing. My boyfriend and boss is Batman." Her voice started picking up speed and adopted an uncharacteristic cheerfulness. "I wasn't even going to say anything, Bruce. Was totally going to wait for you to tell me on your own time. You play a fool well, but me? I just can't. At least I don't have to worry about being doused with Datura gas on the street. That's a relief."

"Jenny," He said forcefully, commanding her attention.

"This happened!" A playing card materialized in her hand with a figure dressed in purple and green motley on the front. "He took Jackie."

* * *

_*Disclaimer: I am not a doctor._


	42. Chapter Forty-One

_Three Hours Ago_

'Wired' was a nice way of explaining my demeanor. At three in the morning, I was as alert as I would have been at three in the afternoon. When I tried to sleep, half-formed questions just kept buzzing around in my head. _How does Bruce do it? How much does the Tumbler II cost? Is this why he always has bruised ribs that we don't talk about? If I stay with him, will he punch me in the face again? Will I stay with him? Does Batman like Jackie more than me? Is it Bruce pretending to be Batman or Batman pretending to be Bruce? Does the death of his parents have everything to do with this?_

My phone rang, giving me a desperate distraction for my brain. "Hello?"

"Ms. Harkness, this is Michael at Dawes Memorial," said a nurse.

"Jackie's awake? That took a while."

"We want to hold her overnight for observation. You're welcome to come visit her now if you'd like."

"I will do that. Thank you."

If anyone can help me sort out my thoughts, it's Jackie. At least concerning what to do about knowing Batman's identity. We could compare notes or something, I don't know. Even before she disappeared, her solutions to my conundrums usually happened to be right, mostly because she never thinks things are as complicated as I make them out to be. And I like my problems complex.

 _Promise to fill it up_ , I scribbled on a note I left for Imogen before I stole her car keys. I owe her for all my trips lately. Then I left as quietly as I could out the back door so as not to wake up Alfred. He must have countless nights without sleep due to Bruce's nocturnal activities.

I may have broken a few traffic laws, but the police were otherwise occupied. My thirty minute drive was cut down to twenty. I parked the car somewhat crooked in the stall and ran inside without locking the doors. I'd buy Imogen a new car if her's got stolen.

The hospital was sanitized of all color and the staff was down to the bare bones minimum needed to run. I stopped at a semi-circular information desk to sign in with a pen that dried part-way through my name. Then I went up the elevator to the third floor of the north wing. Jackie's room was just around the corner, or at least I thought it was. I stopped in the doorway of an empty room. The bed's sheets were thrown across it like someone had been sleeping and got up, and a hospital gown was laying at the foot of it. The bathroom door was open and the light was off. By the looks of it, Jackie just got dressed and left. It wouldn't surprise me if she did because that's what she does, but there was the matter of the $5 million bail. I thought she was sticking around so Bruce could get it back.

I looked around the hallway for some nursing staff. Just down the corridor was a nurse with her arm around the shoulders of a red-haired girl. The sight seemed inherently wrong. Her uniform, a white dress, was a few decades out of date, but it was her distinctly unfeminine strides that told me exactly who this nurse was under her white cap.

"Hey, wait!" I shouted at them. "Jackie!"

The nurse and the patient slipped through a door to the staircase, and I took off after them. I tore open the door seconds after them and found no one on the stairs. I looked up, I looked down, but there weren't any footsteps of anyone running. I must have grabbed the wrong door I turned back and all I saw was a pair of black eyes before a hand clapped over my mouth and slammed my head against the wall.

My vision spun, but a clear image seared itself into my brain of the Joker's face grinning at me under a surgical mask. With a sense of malicious glee, he peeled off the mask to give me the full effect of his crimson Glasgow grin. His face was so close to mine that I could smell the burrito and salsa he'd had for dinner. "I'm curious. Did you have a plan to survive?"

 _Do something! Do something you idiot!_ My brain screamed at me, but I froze in place and tried to retreat into the wall. My body switched into flight mode, but had nowhere to run.

"We had a deal," said Jackie. She didn't sound mad, just tired. Barely awake. Her head hung low behind him.

The Joker rolled his eyes, licked his lips as fast as a snake, and dug around in his pocket with his unoccupied hand. A moment later, he produced a playing card and waved it in front of my eyes. "Need you to do me a favor. Can you give this to Batman? It's important he sees this." His hand slid from my face down to my neck.

My mouth and throat instantly dried, preventing me from speaking. Not that I would have, anyway.

Getting impatient, his grip tightened. "Can you do that for me, sweetheart?" His voice dropped to a growl.

"I don't … I-I don't know t-to find him."I wasn't sure if anything actually came out, but he grinned anyway.

"Just tell Commissioner Gordon you're looking for the old bat. Got it?"

I swallowed a lump in my throat and took the card out of his grasp with violently shaking fingers. I remember that it was a joker card, with the character colored in with purple and green and its eyes scratched out. Then he patted my cheek and released his grip on my neck. My knees buckled and I blinked. The next second, they were gone and I was on the ground coughing for air.

It took me a few minutes to get out of my state of shock. When I did, my brain switched my body to auto-pilot. Must get to safety. Must get to safety. There is only one place in this city that is safe.

And that is with Batman.

* * *

_Two Hours Ago_

I entered Wayne Manor a little louder than I intended. Alfred appeared in the mud room as I was taking off my coat. "Ms. Harkness, I didn't hear you leave."

"I was being quiet," I replied.

"Is everything alright?"

The card in my pocket felt like it weighed a good five pounds. I touched it again just to make sure it was there. "Not really. I need to talk to Bruce."

"I'm afraid I still haven't been able to get in touch with him." His automatic response held no emotion, like he had told this lie a thousand times. No matter. I knew sort of where he would be.

"I'll just wait for him, then. I think this Poison Ivy thing will be taken care of shortly."

Seeing how I wasn't going to be sleeping any time soon, Alfred said, "I'll make you some coffee," and left me to do just that.

With Alfred out of sight, I let out a long breath. I measured my breathing, taking my air in slow and deliberately. Even though I hadn't had a panic attack in a few weeks, there wasn't a guarantee that I was free from them entirely, and running into the Joker was exactly the sort of thing that should have set me off. Breathe in, breathe out.

When I determined that I was calm enough to maintain normal human behavior, I started walking. Instead of going back to my room though, my feet took me in a different direction. I hadn't been in Wayne Manor very much, and the times I had been here, I didn't see much. My subconscious must have wanted to map out the place while I waited for Bruce.

The hallways still smelled a bit like paint despite having been rebuilt three years ago. Maybe Bruce repainted recently. The artwork was all very standard: Flowers, still life paintings, busts of people that might be historically famous, and modern art pieces that made no sense to me. All of it was probably very expensive stuff that only a billionaire could afford to buy, but none of it seemed personalized. It was like he only bought things that would make him look good to other people.

Considering what he's been doing with his nights, I wasn't all that surprised.

Then I started getting brave and opening doors that visitors weren't supposed to peek in. One was a sparsely furnished office with barely a paper to be seen. Another was a study with a dead fireplace. Several others seemed to be display rooms for antique armor, archery equipment, and … baseball? While that room piqued my interest, I moved on.

The east wing seemed to be the least used. While there wasn't a speck of dust to be seen anywhere, it smelled a bit musty. It also wasn't furnished with any art. Maybe Bruce just hadn't gotten to it yet. I passed it up in favor of a hallway a bit more travelled that led more into the heart of the mansion.

I discovered a study straight out of the Victorian era minus the smoking jackets. The library resided next door, packed with books of an eclectic mix of genres. Several had been pulled off the shelves and stacked on a table with bookmarks in the middle of nearly all of them. Books on Chemistry, Krav Maga, Criminal Psychology. Bruce is a very focused man.

Across the hall, I found something odd: a piano in a barely furnished room. I'd think that it was there because it was valuable, but it was one of those cheap uprights. As far as I knew, no one in the Wayne family ever knew how to play the piano. Then again, it's not like I knew his family that well to begin with. But it was still something oddly personal in an impersonal manor, so I flipped on the lights in the room and approached it.

I trilled a couple of keys and determined that it hadn't been dusted in a couple days or tuned for several years. If Bruce didn't intend to play it for any reason, why was the piano open in the first place? He had to be using it in some other way. I bent down and looked at the keys at an angle to see which keys had actually been played, the ones without dust.

Apart from mine, I found six keys in pairs on the right end of the keyboard, and each of them had multiple fingerprints. The pairs must have been played together, so I did that, going low to high. Not sure what I expected, but nothing happened. So I tried a different combination. Then another. Then one more.

The bookshelf in front of me popped open with a small creak. I might not have noticed if I wasn't familiar with the hidden elevator in Mr. Wayne's office. _Middle, bottom, top_ , I noted in case I should have to find this door again. Then I slipped through the door.

It was as if I had entered a new world. I took two steps down into an old-fashioned provisional elevator and leaned over to stare into a cavernous abyss. A few bare bulbs had been attached to the rock walls to provide some light, but dark was the overall tone to this place. I felt my heart racing in my chest, trying to scream, _There are dangers in this place! We should not be here!_ No, I shouldn't. I was going to let Bruce tell me his secrets himself instead of digging them up myself. The Joker has eliminated that option. I can apologize later.

With a shivering hand, I grasped the lever that controlled the elevator, and lowered myself into the cave.

Some of the lowest foundations arched out of the stone bedrock, supporting a mansion well above my head. About halfway down, I heard water running. The air grew colder and I could see my breath in front of my face. The elevator hit the bottom of the shaft with a bit of a jolt, I opened the gate and walked out into a cave. I wasn't expecting anything this … big. A decent sized apartment could have fit in here. In the middle of the cave, Bruce had built a set of computers next to a lake fed by a few waterfalls. Another waterfall covered the tunnel acting as the exit to the cave. Just past it, Batman's motorcycle, the Batpod, waited to be used.

I followed the path to Bruce's computer station, getting soaked by the spray from the waterfall, and found that his supplies went even further into the cave. A metal frame stood under an overhang, with empty spaces for batarangs and other small weaponry. Bruce probably stored his Batman suit here. Behind that were some waterproofed cabinets or cupboards. Out of curiosity, I opened one and discovered stacks of gauze. A simply table/gurney stood nearby, an ominous reminder that Bruce sustained injury every other night.

The elevator rattled and rushed up to the top of the shaft to carry down another passenger. I wandered back out to the lake to meet a panicked Alfred rushing out of the elevator car carrying a mug of coffee. "Ms. Harkness-"

"Oh, thank you," I said, taking the coffee out of his hand. "I think I'll just wait for Bruce to come back down here."

My calm demeanor caught him off guard for a second. "You knew?"

I nodded. "Figured it out last night. It's really important that I talk to him, so I'm going to wait. Here."

"It's warmer upstairs."

"I need Bruce -" My voice cracked and a flood of tears threatened to escape. I grabbed my mouth and managed to suppress my emotions after a minute. When I felt like I was back under control, I tried again, quieter this time. "Jackie's been kidnapped. I want to talk to Bruce as soon as he's back."

Alfred's face creased into intense concern. "Have you called the police?"

I shook my head. "I need Batman. Just Batman."

Knowing that he couldn't convince me to do anything else, he nodded. "I'll bring you a blanket. Give a shout if you need me."

"Thank you, Alfred."

* * *

_One Hour Ago_

" _911\. What is your emergency?_ "

Pamela Isley struggled to turn over so she wasn't flat on her face. "Someone broke into my house," she said with a fearful tremor in her voice. "He handcuffed me and left me alone. Please send someone!"

" _The police are on their way. What is your location?_ "

She elbowed herself up into a sitting position and started scooting the handcuffs underneath her hips. "9349 Woodbury Avenue." A creak on the floorboards downstairs put her on edge once again. "He's back."

" _Ma'am, stay calm. Are you able to speak freely?_ "

Her hands slipped under her feet and she scrambled for the door. Just as she grabbed the handle, a foot kicked the door in, knocking her back on her head. In stepped a man with ragged brown boots, a pressed purple polyester suit with a green vest, and scraggly green hair paired with a face painted by a whirlwind of clown makeup.

Pamela scooted as far away from him as she could on her knees, but he simply took a few steps to keep up, enjoying her futile efforts. He dragged a large oxygen tank behind him, setting it down with a bang after each step. "Poison Ivy, was it?"

"Please, I didn't tell him anything about you! Batman has no idea – "

"But you told him about everything else." The tank came to a stop with a resounding _clang!_ and the Joker sighed. "You disappoint me, Ivy. Ya know why?"

He waited for Isley to respond, giving her an expectant look. "Because Batman beat me?"

"No no no no no. You are a disappointment because your heart's just not really into this whole ..." His hands waved around as he searched for the right word. "Villainy thing. There's no passion in your crimes." He crouched down and took one of her hands in his. "I'm all for saving the environment. It's a good cause to go _crazy_ for, but you gotta do it right. I mean, have you seen the nutjobs they have at PETA? They hire arsonists that think they're Ghandi. I can't come _close_ to that level of wacko. If you want people to pay attention, you have to go all the way. It's not called Environmental Terrorism for nothing."

"I don't want to kill anyone. It's about building a better future for everyone!"

His finger shook back and forth as if he were scolding a child. "Now I know you don't believe that. Peace doesn't solve anything. Do you prefer people? Or plants? Which one would you give your sanity to? Better think quick because you won't have it for much longer."

"What?"

Quick as a knife, he wrapped an arm around her neck and pulled her into a choke-hold while he untangled the tubes of an oxygen mask from the top of the tank. "You shouldn't be so anxious, Ivy. Going crazy is just like falling down an endless pit." He put the mask over her face, holding it on while she writhed and screamed. "Sometimes it feels just like flying." Then he opened the tank.

Isley's eyes went wide as her own toxin flooded her lungs. She let loose the most terrified scream she had ever heard, even when she was testing it. At first, she was tearing at the mask and the steel fingers that pressed it to her face out of sheer panic of the drug. Then it was in just plain fear as her nightmares crossed into reality in front of her eyes.

Humming a jingle from an ad he heard on the radio earlier, Joker waited for the thrashing to subside. Well, not subside, as Isley's contortions were getting more and more extreme. But they changed from focused to blind panic. Without looking in her eyes, he could feel when her mind lost its final threads of sanity. Then he took a small roll of duct tape out of his pocket and wrapped it around her head so the mask was stuck on her face. "Now that I think of it, I probably should have told you about that nasty little _splat_ at the end."

* * *

"Bruce, what do you think you're doing?"

Even after surgery and losing a bucketful of blood, he was still strong enough to sit up despite my and Alfred's efforts to keep him down. "I'm going to find Jackie," he insisted.

"You've been shot!" I nearly yelled at him. "There's no way you can go back out yet!"

"I'll survive." He jumped to the ground and almost crumpled to his feet, staying up only with help from Alfred and a hand on the gurney. "Give me a minute. I'll be fine."

"Ms. Harkness is right," Alfred said. "You're in no condition to go anywhere for at least a few days."

"You're not even supposed to know she's been taken," I added. "If anyone followed me here, and then Batman immediately leaves to go looking for Jackie, they'll know that you're him. You have to wait until you find out from the police."

Beaten, Bruce sat down on the floor and pulled off his cowl. The black makeup around his eyes only emphasized how he could barely keep them open. "How long ago was it?"

"A few hours."

"Does Gordon know?"

"No. I haven't called the police yet. I was waiting for you."

Bruce frowned at that. "Call Gordon directly. He has to know that the Joker's escaped. Are you absolutely sure that it was him?"

For an instant, I could smell the Joker's breath on me and felt his fingers press into my face. "Yes. It's definitely him."

"Go upstairs and call Gordon," Alfred said. "I can take care of Master Bruce."

So with his permission, I headed back to the elevator, listening to Bruce and Alfred argue over whether or not Bruce would be going straight to bed. As far as I heard, Alfred won. I got out of the Batcave as soon as I could, slipping out into the library as quietly as I could. The sunrise peeked through the windows just a bit. Had it been that long?

If I hadn't chased the Commissioner out of Imogen's living room with my interrogation, he probably would have given me a cell number for me to contact him. My bad. I would have to do this the hard way.

" _911, what is your emergency?_ "

"I need to talk to Commissioner Gordon now. My sister, Tex, has disappeared from the hospital. I can't find her anywhere." The longer I talked, the more my voice shook.

" _Her case officer is on their way. What is your location?_ "

"I'm at Wayne Manor, but I have to talk to the Commissioner. He's the only one who will understand."

" _He's not in the office, but I'll try to reach him at home. Can you hold?_ "

I didn't have much of a choice. It took several minutes for the 911 operator to find Gordon. In the meantime, I ended up pacing around the living room and biting off hangnails. Finally, a groggy voice broke through. "This is Gordon."

"Oh, thank God. Commissioner, Jackie's been taken."

"She didn't run away?"

"No. No, it's much worse than that. It's the Joker. He kidnapped her from the hospital."

I could almost hear the shock that went through him. He replied much sharper and focused than before, "The Joker's in Arkham Asylum."

"Well I don't know how he got out, but he's got my sister." Anger rose out of my throat, but I kept it suppressed.

"Are you sure it's him?"

There went my last thread of control. "He threw me against a wall and gave me a Joker card to give to Batman! So, yeah, I am sure! I don't care how, but you need to find Jackie, even if it means getting the Batman to help!"

I hung up as violently as I could with a cell phone before my eyes started burning with hot tears. I spun around to go back to my room, only to see Bruce in the doorway dressed in a robe and flannel pajama pants. From how angry he looked, I realized he had heard at least that last bit of my conversation with Gordon. "Tell me exactly what he did to you."

Shaking my head, I walked towards him while shoving my emotions back down my throat. "Give me a break. I've had a bad day."

Then he pulled me into his arms and hugged me so tight, I thought he was afraid of letting me go. "When I find him, he will pay."


	43. Chapter Forty-Two

Unofficially, Jackie had been missing for five days. Officially, she wasn't gone at all; her poisoning had taken a turn for the worse and the doctors kept her in intensive care at Dawes Memorial Hospital. Her sister even stopped by now and again to check up on her.

Unofficially, the decision came from Commissioner Gordon. "Gotham cannot handle another panic attack," he told half the police department in an off-the-record conference. "The Joker has orchestrated Jacqueline's abduction to incite as much chaos as possible. We will not let that happen. GCPD's priority is finding the Joker and bringing Jacqueline Harkness home to safety, but as far as the public is concerned, we are looking for the last of Poison Ivy's gas bombs. I want him found yesterday!"

Despite the rousing cheers from the rest of the officers of the GCPD, Monday passed with no new leads apart from the security camera recordings from the hospital. Jackie and the Joker vanished like ghosts into the dark recesses of the city. The detectives still pushed on, hoping for a happy ending despite knowing in the back of their heads that it would be anything but.

Alfred didn't stop slipping sleeping pills into Bruce's food until Thursday, but Bruce still forced himself out of bed on Wednesday. Batman moved a bit sluggishly those nights. As much as he wanted to work to the limits of his broken and drugged body to find the Joker, he knew he had to slow himself down or he risked ripping his stitches or putting himself out of commission entirely. Then he would definitely lose Tex.

Friday night, he realized that he and every detective on the GCPD started their investigations in the middle of the Joker's trail. They needed to start from the point the Joker escaped Arkham Asylum and find out where he had hidden since then. Why the police hadn't covertly interviewed the current head of the asylum, Jeremiah Arkham, by now escaped him. Perhaps Gordon didn't want to tip anyone off, or the law's reach just didn't extend that far.

Time for the Batman to step in.

Ever since the mass breakout the Scarecrow initiated nearly four years ago, Arkham had steadily reinforced itself with more and more security features that acted as backups should the primary ones fail. These systematical redundancies successfully kept every psychotic, insane, and deranged inmate inside. Even with the Riddler's blackout, Arkham Asylum's PR team boasted zero escapes (although one teeny-tiny riot broke out, but that's not worth mentioning because it was so small and easily subdued, and no, the murderous, psychotic freak known as the Batman did not have to come in and help keep the patients contained and next question please). The facility hung by a thread in terms of budget, and could scarcely afford another breakout and the bout of bad publicity that would follow. Official documents be hanged.

With a snarling rumble, the Tumbler II pulled up to the front gates, blocking the only road in. Two guards manned the chain link fence; one stood by the gate and the other in the booth with the controls. The engine ceased its roar and the hatch opened like a mechanical armored carnivorous flower and the Batman climbed out. Admittedly terrified for their lives, the two of them approached the vigilante with their heavy flashlights in hand. One prepared to grab his taser, while the other had his radio at the ready.

"I'm here to see Dr. Jeremiah Arkham," Batman growled. "You're going to take me to him." This last part he directed at the man with the radio.

"Um, he's already left for the night," he stammered out.

"His car is still in the parking lot." Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the other guard's arm tense as he psyched himself up to attack. "I wouldn't recommend that." He could break the guard's arm three different ways before he even got close to hitting him, but he didn't think the young man deserved it. "They don't pay you enough to deal with men like me." A small roll of large bills appeared in his hand. "Take me to Dr. Arkham."

He plucked the money from his fingers. "Dude!" his coworker scolded. "What are you thinking?"

"That I'd rather be bribed than get the tar beat out of me." He reached inside the booth, pressed a button that opened the gate, and led Batman inside. "You've got to be crazier than our loonies if you want to break _in_ to Arkham."

"Maybe."

The two of them entered the highly secured building with a wave of the guard's ID card. As they passed the other guards, Batman's guide waved them off with an, "It's alright. He's with me." Too many pairs of eyes scrutinized his entrance for his liking, but with a bullet wound not quite healed, Batman had little other choice. Half the building's lights had shut down for the night so the inmates could sleep, but enough stayed on so the last of the doctors and staff could find their way out and the guards could make their rounds. The administrative wing looked more like office space for a bank than a hospital, and even though they were several walls away, the cries and shouts from the more unstable inmates still wormed their way in if you listened hard enough.

Dr. Arkham had a corner office with a window facing the parking lot, the front lawn, and the nearby wooded park. Batman's escort stopped and knocked on the open door. "Dr. Arkham? There's someone here to see you."

The doctor, a tall, gaunt man in his late thirties with premature gray hairs in his dark hair, had surrounded himself with files and papers on his patients, as well as the mundane matters of running an asylum. As chaotic as the room seemed, a certain sense of order permeated the space. Dr. Jeremiah Arkham looked up from his notes to glance at his interruption, then did a double take when his brain finally comprehended the fact that the Batman stood in his doorway. "Batman. What are you doing here?"

A sideways glance sent the helpful guard on his way back to his station at the gate. With two steps, he strode into the office, consuming more than half the space inside. His bat 'ears' nearly hit the ceiling and his cape brushed past the walls. Dr. Arkham felt a twitch of claustrophobia as the Dark Knight came closer. "I'm investigating the escape of the Joker."

It took the doctor a couple moments to reply. "The Joker hasn't escaped. I would be the first to know about it." He gestured to his computer, which displayed two feeds in the bottom corner; one watched the door of a cell in the darkest area of the asylum, the other a portion of the cell inside. "Keeping the Joker locked up is our highest priority."

The Joker's card, which Batman had scanned and studied for days, landed on Dr. Arkham's desk. "He has kidnapped my partner. It's not a copycat."

With a thin hand, Dr. Arkham picked up the card, flipping it over to examine both sides. "Are you absolutely sure? I've checked his cell myself. He's in there."

"When was the last time?"

"Last night. I know what you're thinking, Batman; Arkham doesn't want the bad publicity. If the Joker had escaped, I would have called the police no matter the consequences. Arkham exists to protect Gotham in our own way. We can't do that if all we're worried about is our own backs. This is the highest security facility this side of the Mississippi. The Joker is contained-"

 _Bam!_ Batman's fist landed in the middle of his desk, scattering a few papers and files. He looked directly into the doctor's eyes. "I don't have time for you to be in denial, Dr. Arkham!" he snarled. "Tex is dying. He is torturing her, I am certain of it. I need to know _when_ the Joker escaped."

"I don't know what to tell you," he snapped, although a tremor ran through him, betraying his doubt. "I'll take you to his cell myself." He grabbed his ID badge and marched out of the office, bumping into the door frame to avoid Batman as much as possible. As for Batman, he again followed his guide down the sterilized halls of Arkham Asylum. In every corner hung a camera, staring down at the residents, doctors, and guards in an unblinking vigil.

The hallway leading to Joker's cell seemed dead. Not a single inmate could share one with the Clown Prince of Crime, or be anywhere within earshot. His greatest weapon: words. And so the silence of the hallway served to protect the inmates and torment the Joker. The lone occupied cell bore a warning to staff to minimize communication, save for the doctors who handed his case. The door itself had three different, complicated locks – ones not easy to overcome.

"Who interacts with him?" Batman asked as Dr. Arkham punched in a twelve digit code.

"Usually, he's have a psychologist, but we haven't been able to get one to take his case ever since Dr. Quinzel, well … It's been a couple months. He gets food and clean clothes through a slot on a regular basis. Normally, he'd be let out for exercise once a day, but the last time that happened, he sent a guard to the hospital, so he does aerobics in the cell."

Batman slid the window open on the door to peer inside. In the middle of the floor, a man with green greasy hair sat hunched over with his back to the door. He had covered the walls with "HA HA HA!"s written in something red. Hopefully lipstick or paint. "He must be enjoying his privacy."

The final lock clicked open with a swipe of Dr. Arkham's ID. "Last chance to turn back. He's no one to be trifled with."

Batman just gave him an annoyed glare out of the corner of his eye. Then Dr. Arkham heaved open the cell door like a bank vault cracking open, and Batman slid into the shadowed room. Without a word, he picked up the man by his shirt collar, hauled him to his feet, and dragged him to the door. "Does this look like the Joker to you?"

Now in the glare of fluorescent lights, Dr. Arkham could see the inmate in detail. He had the green hair, the clown makeup, and the uniform, but the similarities ended there. He had too thin of a frame, stood a full four inches shorter, and had more of a rat-shaped face. Dr. Arkham swallowed a growing lump in his throat and took a step back. "No. That's … His name is Holmes. Robert Holmes."

"He's one of your patients?"

"He was. He was transferred to Blackgate Prison six months ago."

The faux-Joker started giggling softly. "Tick tick boom. Looks like fireworks."

Batman unceremoniously tossed him back into his cell. "I'll need a minute."

"By all means. I need to call the police anyway."

"Commissioner Gordon would appreciate your input." He then stepped inside the cell and allowed the door to drift mostly closed behind him, leaving him alone with Holmes. The imposter hadn't bothered to get to his feet. He just sat on the ground and continued to giggle a childish laugh meant to evoke a level of insanity. However, seeing the Dark Knight tower over him turned it into a nervous one. Careful not to exert himself any more than he had to, Batman grabbed the man by his asylum uniform and threw him against the window. "When did you switch places with the Joker?"

The bars pressed painfully into his back, making it even harder to keep up the nutty chuckling. "What switch? I'm the Joker –"

A hard push into the glass wiped the grin off his face. " _When?!_ "

"Does it really matter? The Joker owns Gotham by now." Batman drove a fist into his stomach a couple times. "Okay!" Holmes wheezed. "The Riddler's blackout."

"Why?"

"Have you seen this place? It's torture being watched and scrutinized and having no one to talk to."

"That's not enough. The Joker would have had a reason."

A smile crept back onto Holmes' face – a real one this time. "He's got Tex, doesn't he."

"What do you know about it?"

Using a sleeve, Holmes wiped half the makeup off his face. "Well, come to think of it, he was pretty pissed when the Riddler showed him that movie of Tex. Seemed to think she was coming between you and him. The Joker's a little possessive of you, but that's just my opinion."

His grip started to shake just a bit, so he dropped Holmes. "Where did he take her?"

"I'm a decoy, Batman. He didn't tell me any of that stuff. You want to know what he _did_ tell me?"

A pit had formed in his stomach just looking at this man's sick glee at the thought of what Tex was going through. Against his better judgment, he pressed on for information. "What."

"He's got a crowbar with her name on it, and some pliers to pull out her teeth one by one, and a soldering iron to burn his name into her back, and when he's finally done, he's going to slice open her stomach and let the Rottweilers at her –"

Blinded by rage, Batman punched him in the jaw and face as many times as he could without permanently injuring or killing Holmes. Not enough times, in his opinion, although he couldn't remember exactly how long he wailed on the defenseless man. At some point, he tore himself away and stormed out of the cell, all but slamming the door on his way out. In the hallway, he realized he had to catch his breath, and the stitches in his side throbbed with pain.

"Alright. I understand. Good night, Commissioner." Batman caught the tail end of Dr. Arkham's conversation just as he hung up the phone. The doctor then turned his attention to the Dark Knight. "Well?"

"Escaped during or after the blackout. Do you have his file?"

Disappointment and disgust directed at himself passed across Jeremiah's face. "I thought we had 100 percent containment." From the top of a pile of folders, he handed Batman a file. "The Police are coming over to pick him up. He's not dead, right?"

"He'll need ice," Batman muttered before turning to escape the cramped office.

"Batman?" The vigilante stopped in his tracks. "I'm sorry about Tex. I hope you find her."

"Thank you," he replied simply.

* * *

"I have a name to research," Batman radioed back to the Batcave while driving towards the south end of the city.

"I'm all ears," Jenny replied in his ear. Both Alfred and Bruce had insisted that Jenny stay out of the investigation, but nothing could keep her from doing what she could.

"Robert Holmes. He was a resident at Arkham. I'm heading to his last known address."

"He sounds familiar." She typed a few things into a keyboard with sharp, precise _click_ s. "Ah. Charged with attempted murder three years ago. Looks like he shot his girlfriend in the neck, but she survived. Plus he was planning on a shooting spree. Pleaded insanity, sent to Arkham for rehabilitation."

"What do you have on the address?"

"That's where he shot his girlfriend. The house was foreclosed on a year later. As far as I can tell, it's been empty since. Hey, how are you holding up? You didn't tear your stitches, did you?"

"I told you you weren't allowed to worry about me."

He pulled into a surprisingly normal and quiet part of the suburbs. All of the houses had the same shape, the same bricks, the same windows, the same driveways, like they had all come out of a factory. Most of them had added chain-link fences around their property. He parked the Tumbler II on the street and leaped over the fence of the house on the corner nearest the street. The house still had its Halloween decorations up while the others had started putting up their Christmas lights. The windows sported vinyl clowns making faces at potential trick-or-treaters, the door had a foil banner over it saying, "Happy Halloween!" and several rotten Jack-O-Lanterns lined the porch steps.

"How long has the house been on the market?"

"Bank put it up for sale nine months ago. Why?"

"The Joker decorated." Batman tested the doorknob, and it swung open easily. The frame had splintered under the force of a kick. The foil banner hid a foot-sized hole that went straight through the hollow-core door. Inside, the draft blew through a typical middle class home, stirring up layers of dust and a few leaves that found their way inside. Batman shone a light through the emptied place. Apart from some footprints, no one had walked through these rooms in quite some time.

Downstairs, the house told a different story. An extension cord stretched from outside and along the ceiling to power a couple exposed light bulbs. It led him to a distinctly new, solid oak door with a padlock latch to secure the room. The stench of human waste hit him in the gut before he even opened the door. The sight inside sickened him, but did not surprise him.

Bars in the tiny basement window. Fiberglass insulation stapled to the walls in a rush and torn over time, possibly to dampen the screaming instead of keeping in the heat. A bucket in the corner. No carpeting, just bare concrete with several large, round patches of dark brown stains. How much blood did Tex lose here? Not enough to kill her. Probably. Batman stepped inside, sweeping the ground for clues. In one of the dried-up puddles, he found a human tooth –

_(Some Time Ago)_

" _Oof!" Jackie flew backwards with the force of the last crack from the crowbar as the Joker stepped back to take a break. Using one of the rare moments of reprieve he would give her, she curled into a fetal position before the next rain of blows descended._ Thwack! Smack! Thud! Crack! _She didn't think her ribs could get any more cracked. And yet he continued to surpass her expectations._

" _You can't pass out yet," the Joker whined, seeing her eyes drift off. "I still want to play!" He paused for a moment to grab her by her hair and lift her head off the concrete. "You're getting boring. And concussed."_

" _My brain am thinking good with stuff," she mumbled. That earned her a kick to her gut with a steel toed boot, followed by the Joker smashing her face into the floor as he stood up. Dragging herself to her scraped up arms and banged up knees, Jackie sluggishly tried to crawl back towards the wall and spit out a mouthful of blood._

" _Whoa whoa whoa, I'm not done with you, Princess." He grabbed her ankle and yanked her back into the middle of the room._

" _I thought it was story-time."_

_He kicked her over onto her back and sat on her stomach, severely restricting how much air she could inhale. "Story-time?"_

" _You know. You beat me until I pass out … ask me if I want to know how you got your scars … I say no, you tell me a story that's supposed to make me scared of you … or change my perspective on civilization like you're Hannibal Lector … and as soon as I start drifting off, you continue beating the ever-living crap out of me."_

 _He repositioned his legs so his knees dug into some of her more broken ribs, and let her scream for a second or three. "Do I look like the kind of guy with a_ routine? _" he asked in disgust._

 _Jackie wiped some blood off her split lip, then reached up to brush the Joker's smile with a dripping thumb. "I'll let you in on a secret._ Everyone _has a rhythm. Even the most chaotic of beats … repeats."_

 _He clutched her throat, his fingers digging into her flesh like claws. "I_ don't _have a rhythm._ " _Instead of the fear he expected, a dismissive smile flitted across her lips and she rolled her eyes. "You know, some people should smile more. Not you."_

_Ten minutes later, the Joker stood up, his leather gloves drenched in Jackie's blood from her nearly broken jaw and bleeding nose. She laid unresponsive on the ground. Her cheek now had a gash where her teeth went through the flesh. The Joker picked out a tooth that had cut through his glove and lodged itself between two of his knuckles._

_The Joker fetched one of his men from outside the room. "Sew her up and put her in the car," he ordered. "It's time to move."_

_The man obeyed quickly, moving in to patch her up. The Joker attended to his own cuts, but the pool of blood left by Jackie's head gave him an idea. He dipped two fingers into the inky puddle and started writing on the back of the door where he knew Batman would see it –_

**Liar, Liar, Bat's on Fire!**

Batman could almost hear the Joker's cackle in all the 'Ha!'s painted all over the door and bare walls. All in blood.

"Bruce?" Jenny gently pressed. "What did you find?"

"The Joker held her here. They've been gone for at least a day."

"In a neighborhood? There have been no noise complaints in the last week from this neighborhood. How did they not hear anything?"

Batman got a camera out from his utility belt and snapped a few photos of the grisly scene. "The walls are insulated, but not soundproof."

"Maybe she wasn't being tortured."

He took a few shots of the message on the door. "Maybe," he lied.

Then he left the room, intending to explore the rest of the basement. The next door opened into what should have been the furnace room, except the Joker and his men had gutted the room, leaving behind several gasoline cans and an open natural gas line. A wire snapped above his head when he opened the door further, triggering a timer. Rushing to stop it, he realized the timer led to a detonator, which he had no time to defuse.

So much for gathering more leads. "He's set the place to blow," he told Jenny. "Call the fire department."

"On it."

With no point in saving the crime scene, Batman raced upstairs and out of the house. He cleared the door an instant before the blast hit him in the back. The concussive force threw him aside hard enough to bring him to his knees, but he barely felt a rush of heat. When he turned back, where once stood a house, all he could see was a pile of brick, shingles, 2"x4"s burying a few underground flames. Absolutely no piece of a house remained standing.

The explosion had shaken a few neighbors awake and they turned on their lights to see what had woken them up. By the time any of them got outside to investigate, Batman and his Tumbler had long since disappeared into the night.

* * *

"You smell like smoke. And gas," Jenny said, wrinkling her nose.

Batman pulled off his cowl and locked up the Tumbler II. "Shouldn't you be asleep?"

"I was waiting for you." She took the cowl out of his hands to put it away. "I take it any trail we could have followed is now up in smoke. Did you find anything we could use?"

Bruce shook his head. "No. I wasn't fast enough. I'm sorry."

"I'll keep my ear on the police chatter, then. The Joker has to make noise at some point." She jumped back into the seat at the massive computer setup and started working on a search for particular buzz words over the police scanner.

"Jenny, I can worry about that. You should get some sleep."

"Don't be silly," she said, brushing him off with a wave of her hand. "It's Friday. Or, Saturday as of three hours ago. I don't have anything to do tomorrow. Go ahead and get changed."

Bruce went off to one of the alcoves of the cave to take off his Bat-suit. Getting the armor off his torso brought on an unexpected wave of pain. Underneath the plates, the patch of gauze taped over the bullet wound had a bright red splotch in the center. He discovered after peeling it off, that the stitches had indeed ripped. He grabbed some new gauze and tape, found a needle and a spool of thread, bit off a length of thread and put himself back together, more or less.

By the time he'd finished and changed into some pajamas, he found Jenny asleep in the chair. If he hadn't been shot almost a week ago, he'd just carry her upstairs to a spare bedroom. Instead, he opted to wake her up with a touch of her shoulder and a whisper in her ear. "Jenny, we can do this tomorrow."

She rubbed her eyes. "I should really go home. I can't keep sleeping here."

"You say that every night. Come on."

With one arm wrapped around his, she accompanied him to the elevator where the two of them ascended to Wayne Manor.


	44. Chapter Forty-Three

I swear I only got to sleep for two hours. If I had a sledgehammer, I would probably destroy my alarm clock apart from the fact that my alarm clock is my phone. And once again, I stayed the night at Wayne Manor.

I pushed off the bedcovers and tried to slip out quietly, but a pair of strong arms snaked around my waist and pulled me back towards him. "Let go Bruce. I need to go to work."

"Take the day off," he moaned.

"I already took yesterday off."

"Your boss called. He said it's fine."

"People are going to start asking questions."

"You're Bruce Wayne's girlfriend. They're already making assumptions."

"Seriously? Then this is not helping. Let go." I elbowed him in the side and he reluctantly released me. I sat up on the edge of the bed, still fully dressed from last night. Our research went well into the night, and by the time we were finished, we both ended up collapsing into the same bed. I rubbed the left side of my head, putting pressure on my temple, hoping it would help a growing headache go away. With all the lack of sleep the both of us were getting, we were developing a dependence on Excedrin.

By the time my body got the energy to stand up and start getting ready for the day, Bruce had decided to start moving as well. "Anything important happening today?"

"No. I can tell the office you caught a stomach bug, if you'd like."

"I might actually have you do that." And so for this morning, we went our separate ways to prepare for the day.

The alarm wasn't the only thing that woke me up that morning. Several texts from Imogen over the last few days said she was lonely, bored, and really needed social interaction from her favorite blonde who doesn't mind her playing with her hair. Last night, she sounded quite desperate. And to be honest, her offer of 'hanging out' sounded exactly like something I needed eventually today.

I went to the guest bedroom that Imogen had vacated a long time ago, and I had rarely visited in the last week and a half. There I found myself packing everything up. I didn't know why, but I felt an absolute _need_ to go. The darkness in the caves below Wayne Manor, while helpful in trying to find Jackie, had started to consume me. When Jackie went missing the first time, I had the advantage of my father kicking me out of my dingy, depressing room and into the light and warmth of what family I did have left. I just needed a break.

Eventually past all my clothes, I found the black sack that I had wrapped jackie's armor in. It still had traces of blood from past injuries, fights, and accidents. Like the trail of blood on the neck from a dart lodged in her throat. Or a patch of someone else's blood on the sleeve. It needs cleaning.

 _How did she even fight crime in this getup every night?_ I thought. _It's not exactly leather, but it's just as unbreatheable. At least it's not as thick as Kevlar._

Jackie's armor went into my suitcase last of all. I felt horrible having it, knowing that if Jackie had just kept it on, no enemy of hers could have taken it off to torture her. But there are thousands upon thousands of ways we could have kept her safe. Have her change rooms at the hospital every few hours; lock her up in Bruce's panic room; tattle on her to Mom and Dad. Of course, there were plenty of ways to keep me from getting kidnapped a few months ago too.

I slammed down the suitcase top and zipped it up before grabbing my coat and yanking it off the bed. No need to think about things that wouldn't help Jackie now. I have work to do.

I dragged all my things downstairs where Alfred was waiting with a tray of breakfast for two. "Ms. Harkness? Are you leaving already?"

"I'm just going back to Imogen's for a bit. She needs me to crowd her space, and I need some space from this house. Well, mostly the basement. I think you know how it is," I added with a forced laugh.

"With the Joker out there, it's safer for you if you stay here."

"Yes, but I'm going crazy."

"Master Bruce wouldn't approve. I don't either, ma'am."

"I'll be fine, Alfred. And if not, you will totally have all rights to say, 'I told you so.' Which I completely understand is not comforting at all and is not really an appropriate time for a joke given the circumstances we find ourselves in."

Despite my ramblings, Alfred knew how to cut to the heart of my dilemma. "You haven't told Master Bruce, have you."

"Are you crazy? He'd lock me up first. Or drug me and then lock me up." I dismissed the train of thought with a shake of my head. The things that come out of me when I'm tired. "Can I get a ride?"

"Of course."

I snagged a piece of toast and a cup of orange juice before he took the tray upstairs to Bruce.

* * *

I forget how much stuff I can pack into an overnight bag. My shoulders were wearing out from dragging my suitcase up to Imogen's third floor apartment. I tried not to focus so much on the pain as I did on the dishes that I had forgotten to wash right before I left her home. Maybe when she left Wayne Manor, she went back home instead of going into hiding. I'm not really sure because I've been limiting contact with the outside world for a while.

The key turned a little too easily, meaning someone had either left it unlocked or had just barely done so. Knowing that I did neither of those things, it simply meant that Imogen made it back to her own home before I did. Or it meant something else entirely, as I found out when I opened the door.

My eyes immediately locked onto a homemade clown getup wrapped around a scarred and insane individual, sitting in a chair directly in a line of sight from the door. My peripheral vision caught other clowns with guns in the room, and Joker cards scattered around the room with a few hanging on strings from the ceiling. All this I processed in about half a second, and used the other half to come up with a solution to this situation.

"Nope. Not doing this." I closed the door and backed up to leave.

Unfortunately, I forgot about one other human factor. "Jenny!" Imogen screamed from inside the apartment. "Jenny, help me!"

A cold chill passed through me. First my sister, then my best friend. Could he just not leave me alone? I turned the handle on the doorknob and walked inside. On my left, a rubber-masked clown held Imogen in a chokehold with a Glock to her head. On my right, two similar goons had small firearms with silencers. And before me, the Joker spun a knife between his fingers. "Have a seat."

Just like last time, I felt the adrenaline surge through my brain and ears as I prepared for fight or flight. If I didn't have Imogen to worry about, I would run, but maybe I could get him to let her go. Every step I took simply raised the tension I held in my body. My face remained motionless and expressionless to hide the absolute terror I felt.

I sat on the edge of an armchair that seemed to be the furthest seat I could get from him. I locked my eyes on him, placed my hands in my lap, and sat straight up. "What do you want?"

"Can't a guy just chat with a smoking hot babe for no reason at all?"

"Then find a prostitute."

"They all think I'm going to kill them for some reason."

"Is it because you've killed several of them?" I shot back evenly.

"Possibly. Look Doll-Face." he leaped from his seat to the armchair next to mine, then grabbed mine and dragged it over so I was sitting knee-to-knee and face-to-face with him. "I'm getting impatient. I've been in six different locations over the last week or so—"

"Eleven days," I corrected through my teeth.

"—and Batman's only found four of them, six of my buddies, and three of the notes I left him. Is he just not trying anymore?"

My heart picked up speed, my fists clenched so tight they were leaving crevices in the skin, and my face finally moved into a scowl, tempered by enmity. Night after sleepless night; crime scene after bloody crime scene; lead after hopeless lead. I could rip his throat out and beat him to death with his own spine if I had to, but Imogen's whimpers kept me grounded. Don't risk her life too. "If it's so boring torturing my sister, you should just give her back to me."

"Nah, that's the fun part; just knowing how much the Batman is squirming, knowing he can't. Do. A. Thing." I felt like each part of those punctuated words came with a poke to my face. Or maybe he was actually poking me. I'm not sure. "You, though, get to see him squirm for real. So tell me, is he squirming?"

"Little bit," I lied.

He grabbed my face in those vice-like fingers, pulling our faces together. "Is he really? What does he do? Does he pace? Does he mutter things under his breath? Does he even sleep anymore? I know Jackie's not."

I pushed his hand away off my face, somewhat growling as I did so. "How should I know? Batman doesn't even talk to me! He's wrapped up in the investigation. _I'm_ wrapped up in the investigation. He's not the one who's really squirming. He's angry. He's just always angry and worried and furious. And when the Batman finds you, there will be hell to pay."

" _If_ he can even get around to finding me," he said, rolling his eyes. My right hand came out to hit his face, but he caught it and held it just away from his face. "What, are _you_ going to stop me instead? It figures. He's been relying on girls for so long that he's becoming a Fatman." I snarled again and tried to get him with my free hand, but I am an amateur and he got that one too. Now he held both of my hands captive, and somehow the situation was remarkably funny to him. "I think you're forgetting about your friend over there. You're going to risk her life so you can let out some rage? Why so furious, Doll-Face?"

"You won't hurt her. That wouldn't be funny; just mean."

He nodded his head side to side, considering my words. "Good point." He nodded at his goon, who let Imogen fall to the floor. I didn't blame her when she ran straight out the door. "What makes you think you can tell me what I'm going to do?"

"I can't. Lucky guess. Are you going to let go so I can properly tear out your eyes?"

"No. I'm going to tell you exactly what I plan to do to Gotham."

"Like some megalomaniac villain?"

He let out a long string of giggles and snickers. "Look at you! We should be a comedy duo, busting guts all over the place!"

"I would kill you in your sleep."

"I don't doubt it. Look, I need you to tell the Batman and the GCPD something. Something big. Something that's going to blow their minds."

"You have dirty bombs, don't you?"

The Joker's face contorted into something resembling unadulterated rage. "Who told you?" he growled.

"I'm smart," I replied evenly, regaining some of my cool. "I figured it out. If the Leaves of Three didn't have the nuclear waste, the next best choice would be you."

"Hm. Yeah. Getting a bit obvious there, aren't I. Maybe if I hadn't borrowed Isley's forces of evil to get the nuclear waste word wouldn't have gotten out."

"Yes, that would have been a good idea. Maybe next time you'll build your very own actual nuclear bomb."

"It's not the same thing?" he asked confused. I couldn't tell if he really didn't know the difference or wanted to play with my intelligence. Either way…

"No. You're just going to make a mess and a whole lot of panic. It's unlikely you'll actually kill anyone." I pulled at my hands to see if he had loosened his grip yet. Unfortunately, even when slightly distracted, his grip held me tight.

He chuckled for a moment. "Chemistry major. I could use one. Know how to make bombs?"

"Joker, the only reason I would join you or help you is to help Jackie escape. And then slice your Achilles tendons. But, yes, I potentially know how to make some basic bombs. Which I would immediately use on you."

"You, Ms. Harkness, have some darkness in your soul. I can help you with that."

"No," I said emphatically. "You want me to tell Batman and Gordon that you're about to set off some bombs, I'll do that. But I will not let you mess with my mind. I've had one too many people try to do that."

A challenge. A fire sparked in his eye. "You do that." Before I could stop him, he kissed my forehead, stood, and threw me onto the floor. Stepping over me, he said, "Tell Fatman I said hello."

And then he was gone with his friends who closed the door after them.

I didn't see any reason to get up, so I laid there with my face in the carpet until I heard the door open. Imogen crept in, and when she saw me lying motionless in the living room, she raced over to me and shook my shoulders to wake me up. "Jenny, are you alright?"

"I'm fine. He didn't hurt me." I sat up slowly. I think I hit my head slightly when I went down. Imogen had red eyes and cheeks wet from tears, but she was relieved to see me doing okay. "How about you?"

"I'm okay. Should I call the police?"

I shook my head. "It's too late. I'll just call Batman."

"How? You can call him?"

I shrugged. "I'll figure it out."

"What did he want?"

"To make Batman even more angry. And to let us know he's planning on setting off some dirty bombs, possibly killing thousands of people."

"I thought you said those weren't very dangerous."

"It depends on what you pair it with. Knowing the Joker, he'll have some C-4 or something."

"How are you so calm about all this?"

"Hm?" I gave it a moment, giving myself a bit of a diagnostic. "I think I'm still in Argue-With-Joker Mode."

"It's making you creepy." She settled in for a better seat on the floor and clutched a pillow like a teddy-bear. "So you're not even going to try to stop him?"

"No. I don't stand a chance. Commissioner Gordon does, though. I just need to know … Imogen, how did the Joker know I'd be coming over this morning? I didn't even know until an hour ago."

"Well…"

_Brief Summaries of Exposition_

_Four Days Ago:_

Four knocks at the door heralded his coming. Imogen opened the door, eagerly hoping for her good friend Jenny, but instead found a terrorist with green hair, a white face, and a purple suit standing on her Welcome mat. "Hey there," he said slowly. "Is, uh…" He pulled a paper out of his pocket, realized it was the wrong one, dropped it, found another one, turned it over, and read the writing on it. "Is Jenny Harkness here?"

Imogen shook her head.

"Does she live here?"

Imogen nodded her head.

He stuck his head in through the door, scanning the apartment. "You sure?"

"She hasn't been home for a week. She said she was looking for her sister."

"Ah. My bad." He then reached out, grabbed the doorknob, and slammed the door shut in his own face.

_Two Days Ago:_

Considering that she had just ordered pizza twenty minutes ago, Imogen figured that the doorbell was the pizza boy. She was, unfortunately, wrong. She opened the door with the cash in her hand, only to give a shout of surprise when the Joker was back on her doorstep.

"What?" He looked to his left and right, and then at himself up and down. He still had blood on his pant legs and maybe a bit on his coat from a … session … earlier that day. "Oh."

"She's still not here."

This time, he just walked right inside. He wandered around the kitchen a bit, grabbing a cookie from the cookie jar and taking one of her paring knives. Then he made his way around to the living room, the bathroom, the bedrooms, poking his nose into each one. Since he found no one resembling Jenny, he returned to the doorway. "Turns out you're right. Is she still at work?"

"I don't know. She doesn't tell me anymore."

"Well she can't go back to her old place. I just torched it. I could torch this place if you'd like."

She shook her head. "No thank you."

"K. See you around." He waved at her, stole the cash out of her hand, and left without further incident.

_Last Night:_

The knocks came strong and loud, four at a time. This time, Imogen knew what she would do: not answer. And call the police. The phone was in her hand, ready to make the call.

"Jenny's friend, open up!" By now, she could not mistake the voice. "Open the door or I'll disembowel you."

This she definitely knew was a possibility. As she started to retreat to the back of her apartment, she heard a rattling at her doorknob and a second voice. "Boss, it's unlocked."

Her face went white and her ears started ringing. How could she have been so stupid? With nothing to stand in their way, the Joker opened the door and stepped in with a crew of three. "You keep your door unlocked in this town?" he asked incredulously.

"Not normally," she replied honestly.

The four invaders swept through the house like a bitter east wind. Joker gestured for her to sit on the couch, taking her phone out of her hands in the process. "Can I borrow this? My phone's out of minutes."

"Oh… okay."

In a few moments, the men had swept the whole place and returned with their report. "No one else is here."

"Then we'll wait." He sat down on the couch, propping his feet over top of Imogen's lap, and took a look at her contacts list. "There she is. I guess we should invite her over."

_Presently:_

"The worst part of all this," Imogen tearfully concluded, "is that I did call the police. They refused to come and investigate because they said they know the Joker hasn't escaped."

I blinked a few more times. "The Joker had your phone."

"Yes. I've never been so scared in my entire life, Jenny," she whispered. The tears she was crying earlier were coming back. "He doesn't sleep. He just stays up and plots and schemes."

"Does he still have your phone?" I interrupted.

"I think so."

I sprang to my feet. One more good lead. One more _solid_ good lead! "Imogen, I love you. I recommend leaving Gotham for good as soon as possible before the Joker thinks it would be funny to kill you." I grabbed my coat and someone's car keys.

"Where are you going?"

"To tell Batman the Joker says, 'Hello!'"


	45. Chapter Forty-Four

"I'll get a hotel room for Imogen, one with security," Bruce said in a low voice.

"Thank you," Jenny replied. "She will appreciate that."

The two of them stood in the kitchen of Wayne Manor with a heavy silence between them, Jenny awkwardly looking away and Bruce with his arms crossed. Alfred attempted to intervene, but a look from each of them told him his services weren't needed at that time, and so he retreated.

"You are not leaving this house until the Joker is in custody."

"Except the Joker now knows the best place to find me is not in that apartment, so if he wants to talk to me again, or in other words, send a message to Batman, he'll come here."

"It's safe here."

"He broke into your penthouse a few years ago, didn't he?"

"It didn't have Batman in the basement."

"Batman's outside looking for my sister. And didn't this house get burned down because of the League of Shadows breaking in?"

He went to grab her shoulders in a show of how serious he was, but she shied away, remembering how close the Joker had gotten earlier. "Sorry. Just… Jenny, this isn't a joke. The next time he comes, he could kidnap or kill you."

"He won't as long as Jackie's alive. She has some sort of deal with him."

"Which ends as soon as she dies."

As soon as the word left his mouth, they both regretted it. Jenny's eyes flared up in fury. "Except that's not going to happen, is it. Is it?"

It took him several long moments before he could come up with an answer, during which time Jenny nearly disemboweled him with the daggers from her eyes. "I want to be optimistic, but we have to look at this realistically too. She's been gone for eleven days. I can't see how she'll survive much longer, especially with the Joker getting angrier."

"Jackie's still alive or else he wouldn't have come looking for me. And the last time someone told me to look 'realistically' at Jackie's disappearance, she came back home alive." With that, she turned on her heel and aimed for the door.

"Where are you going?" Bruce demanded.

"To talk to Commissioner Gordon," she snapped back coldly. "And then I'm filing a complaint against the department and getting a police detail for Imogen's place."

* * *

Imogen's cell phone should have been easier to track than this. Over the last thirty-two hours, the signal would pop up for a few minutes, but before either Batman or the GCPD could get a definite trace on it, the signal would cut out again. Normally the newer cell phones could be followed almost step for step because of the GPS devices that came in all of them, good for finding them if they're lost, stolen, or part of an investigation for missing persons. But this signal came in and out, like someone put Imogen's phone in a Faraday cage and took it out every now and again to check for texts.

Bruce, needing to appear to the real world as Bruce Wayne, simply took his Batman work with him to, well, work. Every time Imogen's phone would pop up on the grid, he would get an alert on his smart phone. He would watch it as the program struggled to find the faint signal, Jenny would subtly watch him for any hint of hope, and as the signal disappeared once again, he would pocket his phone with a shake of his head. Not this time. Then Jenny's shoulders would sag a tiny bit, and they would both get back to work in their public personas.

What surprised Bruce most of all was how convinced _he_ was of Jenny's performance as HappyJenny: the Jenny who did not have a sister kidnapped by the Joker and knowing what all that entailed. She made copies, she answered phones, she laughed at her coworkers jokes, and she even felt free to respond to questions about how Tex was doing.

By the end of the day filled with the nonsense of the corporate world and dashed hopes for tracking down the Joker yet again, Bruce and Jenny took the last elevator down to the ground floor. "Have you heard anything from the Commissioner?" he asked her.

She shook her head. "I don't think GDPD's tracking equipment is any better than yours." She took a deep breath and leaned her head on his shoulder. She looked like she hadn't slept in weeks, which he knew to be true.

"What are your plans for tonight?"

"I have my last chemistry final, and then I'm officially done with college. I don't know why Jackie always has to go missing right before finals. It's really distracting."

"I don't know how you're even able to stay calm and focused here."

"Boxes." After a moment of questioning silence, she explained. "I just have to put everything into an emotional box, which I will take out and deal with later. Right now, I'm in my Wayne Enterprises box. In half an hour, I'll be in my college box. And then, when I'm done, I'll be in my Jackie's-Gone-Missing box."

"Do I get a box?"

"Yes, you get a box," she replied, her exhaustion showing through. "It's a very big box."

Just as the elevator approached the seventh floor, the stupid annoying alarm on his phone went off. Imogen's phone stopped moving long enough for a definite location trace. Jenny stopped the elevator while Bruce followed the location to an address somewhere in the Palisades of Gotham. As he narrowed down the location, she hovered over him, trying to get a good look until he finally had an address. "202 Gloucester Way. Does it sound familiar?"

"Yes, I've passed it on my way up to Wayne Manor." She pulled out her own phone and searched through her contacts until she found an address that matched. "I've always wondered how to say that street. Glue-ses-ter? Glau-chest-er?"

"Glou-ster," he corrected.

"Really? I like that much better. Okay, the owner is Miranda Tate."

"The name sounds familiar, but I have no idea who that is."

"One moment, and I will." She pocketed her phone and produced a tablet which Bruce had not seen before. Taking a peek at the files she scrolled through, he noticed they were all on the highest of society in Gotham, and some nationwide. He knew she kept a bit of information on everyone she could, but he didn't realize how deep it could go, or how useful it would prove to be. "Miranda Tate is a relatively new addition. She just moved into town about 18 months ago. I haven't been able to track where her money comes from, but she has a lot of it. She's incredibly successful at taking failing businesses and turning them into powerhouses, even after she's left the Boards of Directors."

"What does she have to do with the Joker?" he asked, getting impatient.

"Nothing. This woman is a straight-shooter. I doubt there's any way she could be hiding Jackie under her floorboards."

No one has a perfect record, he noted mentally. "The Joker knows Batman is chasing this phone. He chose this location for a reason, and he wants the police there tonight." Bruce wracked his brains for a reason why he had already heard Miranda Tate's name before. Something about an invitation. "Jenny, check for events I've been invited to tonight or tomorrow."

Faster than lightning, she whipped through his calendar. "Birthday party, Gala, Concert, Wild Beast Feast (weird), another Gala, oh, a charity ball. Held by Miranda Tate at 8 tonight."

"That's it. We need to be there and find out exactly what her connection is with the Joker."

"No, _you_ need to be there. I have a chemistry final tonight."

Despite how riled up Jenny had started to get, Bruce kept his cool. "It will look suspicious if I go alone, especially since I do have a girlfriend."

"No, it won't… well…"

"And it won't look strange if the _two_ of us disappear into the dark corners of the house…"

"No, I can't do tonight. I can't just rush through a final."

With calm, unassuming expressions, he tore away at each of her straws of defense. "And it will bring us one step closer to finding Jackie and figuring out what Joker wants."

"Every time I go to a party with you, Mr. Wayne, it ends badly."

"That was only one time. This one could go well."

By now, Jenny had steam coming from her nose. "I hate you so much right now. I don't even have a dress."

"Please," he chortled, flipping a switch and putting the elevator back into operation. "You're talking to Bruce Wayne."

* * *

It felt like it had been ages since Bruce dressed up in a ridiculously expensive black suit to go and save the day. He almost forgot how to tie a bowtie, even. Despite his initial awkwardness with the suit, he soon slipped back into the role he had grown to despise how well he could play: The Billionaire Playboy at a Party.

He arrived soon after 8 in his Lamborghini Aventador to the fanfare of the press and socialites. The car soon went into the possession of a valet and Bruce Wayne climbed the short expanse of stairs to the door to the heart of the party. Instead of going inside and schmoozing with the elite of Gotham, he waited outside in the cold air. She said she wouldn't be too long.

The guests arriving to the party found it odd that he stood alone and lonely. "Don't you have a date, Bruce?" the occasional single socialite would ask as they entered.

"I'm waiting for someone," he would answer.

And then they would go on a bit miffed, but otherwise forgetting the exchange.

Finally a limousine pulled up in front of Miranda Tate's residence, stopped, and let out its passenger. A woman in a sky blue dress accented with crystals that fit around her form so gracefully, emerged from the back seat. Her blonde hair had been pulled back into a simple loose French braid, framing a fair face that looked nervous, curious, and a little angry.

The paparazzi swarmed this new face, camera flashes popping in her face. But this is where Bruce Wayne came to the rescue. He parted the sea of people, looped Jenny's arm through his, and guided her away, but not without a touch of his own. He pressed a button on a small device he'd borrowed from the R&D labs, and the cameras suddenly all stopped flashing.

"That's probably the most romantic gesture you've made for me, Mr. Wayne," she remarked.

"Toys from work are the best toys to have."

"EMP emitter?"

"We're working on one with a more focused range to disable specific targets. By the way, you might not receive any phone calls or texts for the next hour or so."

"Lovely."

They entered the ballroom together to the excitement of the crowd already partaking in the festivities. Jenny handed a butler her coat, and the two walked down to the dance floor to participate in the foxtrot already begun. They seamlessly blended into the flow of the rest of the dancers.

"How did your test go?" Bruce asked Jenny.

"Fine. I answered enough questions correctly to get a C+, and a few more just in case. If I'm lucky, I'll get a B-. Other than that, I'm free from school forever."

"We could put you in charge of the R&D Department."

"Really? I might actually enjoy that. That place really got turned around once you reappeared."

"How do you know? You weren't working here at the time."

"I never join a company without thoroughly investigating it. Other notable highlights of Wayne Industries include spearheading the public transit overhaul in the 90's and when Lucious Fox became CEO. He did an amazing job. You should really bring him back."

"Well, that would all depend on if he's forgiven me or not."

"For what?"

Bruce gave a small, embarrassed grimace. "Spying on everyone in Gotham, using their cell phones."

"Hm. I suppose if I had better morals I'd be incredibly offended at the gross invasion of privacy. But I spend my free time collecting blackmail on all the important individuals in the city just in case."

"You don't have one on me, right?"

"You? I keep all your secrets locked up in my memory. I think having Mr. Fox back would be good for the company. You wouldn't have to spend as much time at the office."

"I'll look into it," he replied noncommittally. "Do you see anything suspicious about the guests?" He spun her around just to give her a quick look around the room.

"No, everyone just seems to be enjoying themselves. What do you see?"

Secrets, lies, intrigue, corruption. The usual in a crowd this loaded. "The Joker's not one for subtlety. If he has someone here, he should be fairly easy to notice."

"We'll need a look at the serving staff. If I was sneaking in – not that I have in the past – I would be a waitress."

"Should we start looking around, then?" Bruce asked her, ready to do some real investigation.

"In a minute. It has been eight hours since I've eaten, I see a table full of free food, and I am starving." The song ended, the dancers applauded the musicians, and the two of them decided to take a break from dancing. She then more or less dragged him over in that direction.

While Jenny daintily downed a silver dollar sandwich and a few pieces of fruit, a confident, but unassuming woman with dark hair, rich brown eyes, and olive skin approached him from across the ballroom. "Mr. Wayne," she said as she got closer. "What a pleasant surprise."

From the quick background Jenny had given him a few hours earlier, he knew this had to be the one and only Miranda Tate. A quick glance from his date told Bruce that he should go ahead and act like she wasn't even there. So, he turned the charm on full for her. "Ms. Tate, you act as if I never go out visiting the gentry anymore."

"Oh, of course not. It's just that I'm amazed you'd grace my humble home with your presence."

Humble was not the word he would use for the tasteful opulence of her ballroom, parlor, and paintings. "It had more to do with the hostess than the shindig. Wayne Enterprises is actually in need of someone with your innovative experience. I've seen your track record."

"And I've seen yours, Mr. Wayne. Sudden big investments in military technology that never gets a government contract; large, impulsive donations to charities; surprise acquisition of hotels; two new CEOs within two years. With all due respect, from what I can tell, you don't exactly know what you're doing with your company."

"You're absolutely right. I want to do something good in the world, but I don't exactly know which direction to take. What would you do?"

The question took her back a bit. "Me? I personally have an interest in creating a reliable renewable resource of energy with high output. It's a bit of a fantasy at this point, to be able to save the world."

"There's nothing wrong with those kinds of dreams. Besides, you never knew. Do you think that back when they were putting men on the moon that they would believe that we could hold more computing power in the palms of our hands than they did in the Apollo 11?"

She smiled with a bit of humor and hope. "And I suppose Wayne Enterprises has the next miracle in the making?"

"You'll have to come find out, and even maybe help make it happen."

"I'll consider your offer." Just then, someone else called her name, inviting her over to their conversation, and as hostess, she had to make her guests happy. "It was a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Wayne."

"You as well, Ms. Tate," he said as she left.

With her gone, he turned back to Jenny, only to find that she too had disappeared. And in her absence, Bruce suddenly found himself targeted by the Trust Fund Brigade: Single Ladies Division. He could almost feel the seductive charms the ladies had only begun to set upon him. In order to mitigate the number of women who would try to ambush him, he started taking a walk around the dance hall to find Jenny and take a look at the serving staff.

"Bruce, it's been so long!" a tall brunette with curves to die for, said as she followed him.

"Yes it has," he said, trying to figure out who she was. He knew he must have asked her out at one point or another. "I'm sorry, I can't exactly remember how I know you."

She stopped in a huff. "Seriously? We dated for, like, six weeks. How could you possibly forget Milan, and Rome, and that night in Sicily?"

Right, a case that had led him to Italy. He needed a cover and so brought Amanda along. "Amanda, of course! I'm sorry, you must have done something to your hair."

Her face immediately melted into something much happier and less likely to kill puppies. "You noticed!" And then she started into that high-pitched giggle that made his skin crawl and more than likely caused their breakup.

With his focus on this Amanda, the other prospective bachelorettes went in for the kill and the opportunity to catch him while he had to stand still. Even the homeless weren't this money-grubbing.

"Excuse me, ladies," a welcome voice said. Jenny reappearing and pushing her way through the crowd. "This one's mine." Amidst death-glares, huffs of disappointment, and judgmental looks over her appearance, she took his hand and guided him towards the hallway where they could have a bit more privacy. She had a smug, all-knowing smile.

"Thank you for that," Bruce said. "Did you find anything?"

She nodded. "Wine cellar."

"How – "

His phone appeared in her hand, which she must have picked out of his pocket. "I had to find the restroom for several minutes. How was Ms. Tate?"

"She... may be joining the Board of Directors. Shall we?" The two of them then swept out of the room to avoid any further contact with any of his past flings.

To get to the staircase to the wine cellar, they had to pass through a servants' hallway, which the servants still had to use that night. They were more than willing to play the part of young lovers, slightly tipsy, and looking for a place they weren't supposed to be. Bruce had found in snoopings past that if witnesses are embarrassed to see your behavior, they'll suddenly forget you're there and make all attempts to avoid the area as best as possible. Jenny found the handle to the ancient oak door when he had her pressed against it, taking advantage of the moment to lock his lips to hers, and the two spilled into the basement.

Like actors headed backstage who may have had some off-screen romance going on, it took them a few seconds to remember that they needed to investigate something. "Right, the phone," Jenny said, pulling away. Bruce had a couple flashlights in his pocket. He gave one to her, and they began searching through the cold, damp cellar. Apart from the lattice-work filled with aged and expensive varieties of wine, there didn't seem to be a lot to go through. Jenny took the areas behind crates and boxes while Bruce examined the barrels.

Some of the wine casks looked rather cheap, a departure from the expensive tastes Ms. Tate had, almost like someone else had purchased them. "Jenny, over here." Bruce lifted off one of the tops which seemed oddly loose. The two peered inside, finding no liquid of any sort. Just a mess of wires, a few packs of explosives, a timer set for five minutes, and Imogen's cell phone. "Found it."

"Well shoot."

"It's a bomb – "

"I got that from the vaguely bomb-shaped device inside."

"Everyone seems to just love using bombs nowadays. What's this?"

They followed a few wires leading out from the cask to two others. Each of them opened one and found the same metal canister inside. "I think I might know. Do you have a Geiger counter on you?"

Somewhere in the pockets of his suit coat, he found a small device that he flipped open to scan the cask. "I do, actually."

"Of course you do," she silently mouthed.

Bruce didn't let her know he saw that. He just focused on making sure his device hadn't caught the EMP burst from earlier. Fortunately, it seemed to have escaped it or just rebooted. It ticked in his hand, sensing the radiation emanating from the canisters. "C-4 and Cesium: the Joker's new favorite cocktail."

Jenny's hand holding the flashlight began to shake just a bit. "Can we disarm it?"

He took a deep breath, trying to scour his brain for any information he had stored on the subject. He did spend quite a bit of time studying biology, toxicology, chemistry, and physics. However, none of it quite added up to what he need to know right at this moment. "I don't know. Didn't you study this sort of thing?"

"I'm a chemist, not a bomb defuser."

That's when Imogen's phone lit up with a relaxing acoustic guitar ringtone, and the timer began its countdown. "Run. Now!"


	46. Chapter Forty-Five

8:42. A good time as any other to set off a bomb. The Joker wandered down the cinder-block hallways, dialing in the number to the one girl's phone before stopping at the prisoners' quarters. He mildly regretted not being able to see a big boom in person, but getting rid of someone who tried to get your nuclear waste never hurt anyone. "Any changes, Steve?" he asked the guard at one particular door.

"I've never seen anything like this before, sir." The goon looked a tiny bit nervous to be assigned to watching Tex.

"Stick around long enough and you'll see a lot more of it. _If_ you live that long."

He looked more confused than creeped out or intimidated. "No, I mean, you've put her through hell."

"Yeah?"

"Why doesn't she look worse than she does?"

Confused, the Joker looked through the window in the door at a frail, red-haired girl huddled in the corner, looking far too well for his liking. Not that she looked perfectly healthy or anything. It's just that the bruises and cuts had healed over far more than he knew humans during trauma could recover in a short length of time. "Well she _used_ to. Go get my camera. I want to give Batman a present. I'll be a minute." The guard hurried to obey him.

Throwing open the door to the refrigeration room, Joker stormed up to Jackie, grabbed her by her hair, and threw her head first into the next wall. As she tried to recover, he yanked her back by her ankle, knelt on her stomach, and punched her a couple times in the face, her arms somewhat diverting the blows, but not doing much good. It still wasn't good enough, so his blows also aimed for her sides.

"What are you?" he demanded between blows.

"I'm human!" she screamed back in anger. Or maybe she was screaming because her face was being pummeled into the concrete. One of the two.

He paused briefly and stood up. "Tell me what you are!" This was punctuated by a solid kick to her stomach. She curled up into a ball of pain, crying and hiding her face, but not talking. So much whining and blubbering and not giving him the answer to his vague inquiry. So he just kept on applying his boot to her body.

"I don't know what you want!"

Okay, well, maybe he better be more specific. He got one of his favorite switchblades out of his coat pocket before taking it off so he could have better mobility. Then he took her left arm, twisted it just out of her reach, and put a knee on her back to keep her down. He placed the tip of the blade on the underside of her forearm so she would know exactly what was there. "I want to know why your hands don't break when I smash them. I want to know why you seem to have developed accelerated healing. I want to know why you suddenly accumulated years of combat training in those two weeks you disappeared. In short, I want to know _what you are._ "

"Please don't ask me that," she pleaded, whispering.

The blade dragged across her skin, leaving a noticeable cut and her shrieks in the air. "The magic words don't work here. Who do you think you're protecting? Batman? Your big sister?" Another pull brought more blood and tears.

"It's hard to explain."

He gave her a little stab in her upper arm away from a major artery. "Simplify it."

She tried desperately to slow her hyperventilation before trying to explain anything. Another cut across her back didn't help matters. "My hands are mechanical prosthetics, best explained as bits of an android stuck to my wrists. I have a computer implanted in my brain with enormous servers of data, good for teaching me Krav Maga, knitting, mechanical engineering, and other things. It seems to have activated an emergency response protocol to regenerate my body as a last-ditch effort to save my life, of which I was unaware of until two days ago. All things considered, it seems to be a poorly thought out fail-safe."

The cutting paused as soon as her techno-babble had digested in his brain. "You what?"

"As you can imagine, this technology doesn't exist yet, probably not for a good four thousand years or so. Which leaves us with the question: Since I'm too dumb to invent it myself, _how_ did I get it?"

Admittedly, it took him a full minute to process exactly what she was getting at, while giving her little jabs in the meantime. "Time travel? I don't buy it."

"Really? I thought you were the kind who thought out of the box."

"I am!"

"Batman's smarter than you, but there's no way he's ready to know yet."

"So I'm the first one you've told?"

"Apart from Jenny, yes."

A grin cut across his face. "Cool. Now, I kind of want to see how far this regeneration thing can go." He signaled to his man outside to close the door so her screams could echo properly in the chamber before they got ready for filming.

* * *

"Jenny, go!" Bruce said, pointing towards the door.

My feet locked into place in the ground while my mind raced with evacuation techniques. We couldn't just start screaming, "Everyone needs to get out now!" without explaining why, or how we know there's danger afoot. "No one's going to evacuate unless there's an emergency," I said breathlessly.

"We already have one in the basement."

"A fake one. Can we set off the fire alarms or cause a gas leak?"

Of course, Bruce being Batman, would have something up his sleeve, or rather in his pocket. He whipped out a miniature acetylene torch. "I can start one, but it won't be big enough to get everyone out in –" he checked the timer, "–four and a half minutes. Get out now and I'll figure something out." I could see him sizing up the barrels to see if he could just get the bomb out of the building. Unless this basement had a disused coal chute, which would probably be blocked up, he couldn't do it.

"No, we just have to have the right person raise the alarm." I kicked off my shoes and started running for the stairs, hoping I'd figure that out once I got upstairs.

Just down the hall, the party hadn't even started to die down. I scanned the area quickly for the person in charge of running absolutely everything here, and found none other than Miranda Tate sharing a quick word with her head of security, an average sized, gaunt man who had brown hair and a beard and eyes that looked like they had perpetual dark circles. I might have looked a little strange running up to her and pulling her away behind a pillar for a quick private word. "Ms. Harkness, what can I help you with?"

"Ms. Tate, everyone in this house needs to leave immediately," I told her in a low voice.

"Whatever for?"

"The Joker placed a bomb in your basement. I don't know why he chose you, but it's hot and about to go off in four minutes."

I saw some emotion pass through her eye, albeit too quickly for me to catch. It wasn't panic, however. "How do you know?"

"I've been trying to track the Joker down for the last two weeks because he's escaped from Arkham and kidnapped my sister. Miranda, please trust me."

By the frown in her face, she knew I told the truth and wouldn't try to embarrass her for no reason. She nodded at her head of security, and then stepped into the ballroom. With a champagne flute in hand, she tapped the glass with a knife, quieting everyone down. "Ladies and Gentlemen, I am so appreciative that all of you have come to my home tonight. Now, I have a surprise for all of you that I would like for all of you to see. Just outside, one of nature's greatest light shows is about to begin." She began walking through the dance floor towards the front doors, talking as she went. "Meteor showers cannot often be seen at this time of year, but NASA has predicted that we will be able to see a rare and especially bright one from the Orion Nebulae from this part of the country. Won't you all join me?"

Altogether, the crowd followed her out the front door. No mad dash for the doors and windows, so everyone would get outside safely. And possibly in three minutes. She was lying through her teeth, and it looked so perfectly real. If I hadn't told her myself about the bomb, I would have believed her. Me. I turned to find Bruce and join the others, only to see him jogging to catch up to me. "What were you doing?" I asked him.

"Cloning Imogen's phone. It might have something we could use. Should we go see a meteor shower?" He offered me his arm, subtly checking his watch at the same time. "Two minutes, fifty seconds."

I noticed that while Ms. Tate's words may not have convinced everyone to leave the house, her security staff had started to comb through the house looking for stragglers, and invited them to join their hostess outside. I couldn't have done such a thorough job myself. I felt a small weight taken off my shoulders knowing no one would die inside the house.

Once outside, we watched the night sky expectantly, looking for any sign of light streaking across the sky. Miranda was walking us quite a ways from the house, trying to get us out of the light polution a bit. "What do we do if there is no light show?" I asked Bruce.

"I'm pretty sure the bomb will distract them from that. If all else fails, you just make it up."

"How?"

"You remember the story about the Emperor's New Clothes?"

I elbowed him in the side. "That will never work. People can't be _that_ dumb."

"You think? Oh, look! There's one!" he shouted, pointing somewhere towards the sky.

"Where?" half the crowd around us demanded, scouring the sky for any sign of falling stars.

While Bruce gave me an, "I told you so," grin, and I returned it with a roll of my eyes, he pulled me in closer to his body. A few moments later, he hugged me tightly and pulled us down just as the bomb went off.

I felt it shake the ground and blow a blast of heat at us, more than I heard it ringing through the air. Bruce got the worst of it with his back towards the building and us nearly in the rear of the company. No doubt he planned it that way. We stood up and observed the mansion that Miranda Tate once lived in. The lower windows had shattered and flown all over the place, and the main floor had caught on fire. As it spread to the upper floor, the foundations weakened by the concussive blast gave way, and the whole thing simply groaned and collapsed. Where the house stood before, now was a somewhat level pile of burning debris.

* * *

I will spare you the details of the fire department's cleanup. Let's just say that the nobility of Gotham did not appreciate having to have showers on site, confiscation of electronics, having to take medication to counteract radiation poisoning, and most of all, requests to keep away from all forms of media and taking their story to the morning breaking news. Naturally, that's the first thing they did. I came away from it all with ringing in my ears that wouldn't go away, 2.7 and 0.5 written in black on the back of my hand, raccoon eyes, and a CDC bathrobe.

Fortunately, most of the guests hadn't gotten exposed to much radiation, and the casualties and injuries count landed at a solid 0. I'm sure the Joker didn't appreciate that last part.

Alfred picked us up around 3, and I ended up falling asleep in the back of the car. I didn't wake up until 11 A.M. the next day in the guest bedroom. At that point, I scrapped the rest of the day and decided I needed a really long bath.

When I finally emerged for food, dressed in jeans, slippers, and a Gotham City College t-shirt, I found Bruce and Alfred deep in a whispered discussion drowned out by the news playing in the living room. "You're very lucky I can't lip-read,' I said as I went for a bowl of cereal.

"How are you feeling?" Bruce asked.

"Tired. Shaken up. At least the ringing stopped. It's nice to be able to hear after this bomb." I got a box of Cheerios out of the cupboard, Alfred helpfully handed me a bowl, and I poured myself some cereal at the counter the two had stationed themselves at. Bruce had a computer and his phone set up, both of which he tried to nudge out of my view. "I take it you have a lead on Jackie, which you are debating on whether or not to give to Gordon."

Instead of wondering how I knew, he just went straight to the explaining part. "There is no way Batman could have gotten this information from Imogen's phone."

"Sure there is. I cloned the phone and gave Batman the texts and phone call history since it was taken away from Imogen. Just send him an anonymous email."

"But if the police get involved, there get to be too many variables. It's easier if I can go in alone."

"The GCPD wants to catch the Joker as much as you do," Alfred cut in. "You need to work _with_ your allies for the best chance of success."

Somewhat grudgingly, Bruce turned back to his computer, writing up something to send to Alfred. Within two minutes and I had worked my way through half my bowl, he hit Enter and sent off the information to Gordon. "Done. We should expect a strike team tonight."

"Where?"

"The Joker ordered some supplies using Imogen's phone. We're headed there tonight after dark."

I nodded, a bubble of hope rising up in me. "Good."

* * *

It was just before six in the evening. Bruce had some stuff to put together for the strike tonight, so I hung out in the living room reading over the evidence and clues for Jackie's whereabouts. For some reason, Bruce really didn't want me to know what kind of supplies the Joker had ordered, or what the exact address was they would be headed to. I got a phone call, interrupting my studies from a man with a vaguely familiar voice. "Whatever you do, do not turn on the television." Blood rushed to my face when I realized who it was.

"You. You nearly blew me up!"

"You're alive now. What are you so mad about?"

"Why do you have my number, Joker?"

"'Cuz Jackie wanted me to be able to call you in case of an emergency."

"For instance, 'Help, your sister has been kidnapped by a maniacal, homicidal, psychopathic clown!'?"

"Ha ha ha! We'd make a great pair, Jenny!"

"What channel am I not supposed to be watching?" I found the remote and turned on the TV.

"Two, Five, Thirteen, and possibly Sixteen. Do you mind if I keep you on the line for the next fifteen minutes? I just want to get a reaction shot."

"Yes, I do." I hung up and then turned off my phone. No need to be interrupted by him while I'm viewing something sure to make me react in a way he wants me to. What that is, I just didn't know yet.

A few minutes past six, the perfect time to catch as many passive viewers of the morning news as he could. No doubt every news station he sent this message or film or tape or whatever to, thought this would be the terrorist's explanation for the bomb blast in the Palasades. And no doubt they would air it no matter what GCPD or the FBI or national government said. If they didn't know that the bomb was Joker's by now, they would tonight. But he very much did want me specifically to see it.

I turned the channel to whatever station had the local news playing only to find a film already in progress. It seemed to be a meat locker without the meat, all decked out for the December holidays. A fold-up metal chair sat in the middle of the room, waiting to be occupied. Bruce came into the living room at this point and sat on the couch with me to watch.

A man in a purple suit that I recognized all too well, crossed to right-screen humming a song. As I tried to figure out what holiday song it was, he started singing. "Dashing out of Arkham... On a joy-ride, killing spree... Slashing throats I go... Laughing all the way!" He jumped out to mug the camera with his grating, glee-filled laughter coming out of a slashed up mouth and crooked yellow teeth. I guess I jumped back at this point because I felt Bruce's steadying hand on mine. And yet, I could not look away.

The Joker continued, setting a large sledge hammer in the middle of the room just in front of the chair. "Robbing banks by day... Bombs light up the night..." Here he paused to add his own quiet _boom!_ sound effect while two goons in clown masked dragged in a struggling girl. "Oh what fun it is to slay a policeman on sight!"

They forced the girl into the chair, her red hair flying around her face as she kept trying to fight them tying her hands to the sides. "Bruce, that's Jackie," I whispered.

"Jingle bells, Batman smells, Gordon's got no clue..." He quit singing for a moment to punch Jackie in the stomach. The blow was hard enough to allow the goons to secure her. Then he continued his mumbling ditty as he picked up the sledgehammer. "The Batmobile got blown to Hell, and the Joker got put away, hey!"

"Is this live? Can you track it?" I asked Bruce.

"No. The stations would have gotten videotaped copies."

"Joker's out, Batman's scared, Tex just broke a leg."

"What?" Jackie and I almost chorused together in pale terror.

With a big, exaggerated heave, he took his sledgehammer and swung it directly for Jackie's right leg. I know I must have heard the crack and my sister's cries of pain, and I must have screamed my lungs out, but that is the exact moment all systems failed and I shut down.


	47. Chapter Forty-Six

The Batcave would remain empty tonight. After calming a hysterical Jenny down, Bruce promised her – and himself – that, "I will find her tonight. This ends now." Alfred, being the ever-so-reliable convenience that he was, brought her some of his trademark 'Knock-you-out-for-your-own-good' tea. Within twenty minutes she had passed out in the guest bedroom, and Bruce stormed down into the cave.

Every weapon and tool he could fit on his person, he found a way to get it into a compartment. Every connection to data he could access, he put on a feed through his cowl and a computer interface on his belt. Every clue he ever had, he sorted through and analyzed.

"You'll be careful, now," Alfred reminded him. "He's not going to let you take Tex back unmutilated."

Bruce stopped in his hurried preparations. "I don't have time for this, Alfred."

"I've had my fair share of dealing with terrorists. Kidnapping and torturing female combatants or citizens is a classic tactic meant to demoralize the enemy."

He slammed a piece of equipment onto the table in a burst of frustration and rage. "What are you getting at, Alfred? That I shouldn't let this get to me, let it destroy me? Well it's been destroying Tex, and it's my fault."

"When you went after the Joker the first time a few years ago, you missed the damage he had done to Harvey Dent's mind. He's not just been torturing you, Master Bruce, or her. That girl upstairs is systematically having her heart torn out of her with every step of this investigation. That film tonight was meant for Ms. Harkness, and no one else."

"Then he should know that's only making me more angry," Bruce nearly growled.

"Be careful tonight," he warned again, "or you'll lose more than just Tex."

* * *

Dogs. The supplies Joker had ordered were dogs. He wanted dogs that were about to be put down for attacking a human, had been rescued from a dog fighting ring, or had food aggression and were starved over the last several weeks. Batman had the data that provided the order, and Gordon had the resources to find out who, where, and when.

The data culminated in an address near the docks. The Joker and his men holed up in an electronics supply store's warehouse on one of the less trafficked corners of the area. From the roof of a building across the lot from the warehouse, Batman watched as several cars filled with gunmen swept into the area. The guards who watched over the building either ran as soon as they saw the clown masks, or quickly got knocked out for their efforts.

It took the Joker's men about half an hour to clear out the remaining personnel and set up their own guards on the perimeter. Once they had complete control, a covered pickup truck pulled into the loading dock. One of the clowns exchanged a bundle of cash for whatever they had in the bed of the truck. Soon, they pulled out large kennel crates. Even from his standpoint, Batman could hear the snarling from the large dogs inside. One even went so far as to bite the exposed fingers of the man carrying his crate. He yelped, dropping the dog to hold his bleeding hand and stem the bloodflow. While he went off to take care of his injury, another gunman kicked the crate a few times to shut the dog up and move it along.

All this Batman could see, and yet there wasn't a hint of police getting ready to intervene. So pulled out a burner phone and dialed up the Commissioner.

"This is Gordon."

"The Joker is setting up for something big here. I've seen dogs, but not the Joker or Tex. Where are your men?"

"The judge won't sign off on the warrant. We're ready to move as soon as we're allowed to."

"What about the evidence?"

"Since we technically don't have a reliable source, Judge Hafen is forbidding the GCPD to act unless we have probable cause."

Batman quieted a growl of frustration. There are other ways around law-abiding judges. "What about a Batman sighting? Would that count as probable cause?"

"Yes, but – "

"Give me five minutes and get ready to move."

"There's not an officer here who doesn't want to kill you. You'll be too exposed."

"I'll do whatever it takes to get Jackie out of the Joker's hands." With that, he ended the call and tossed the burner phone away.

A second vehicle pulled up, this one an SUV. A familiar villain jumped out of the passenger seat and sauntered towards the warehouse. The driver got out, opened the back hatch, and picked up a body. Matted red hair flopped over the thug's shoulder as he carried her limp form into the warehouse. Whatever the Joker had planned for Jackie, now would be the best time to stop it.

Batman located a guard on the east end who had strayed away for a smoke break. Electricity surged through his cape, forming a set of wings, and he leaped from his perch. With last focus, he aimed for the man. Before he realized someone was coming for him, Batman landed a blow to his chest, knocking him down. He ensured the thug's silence with a solid fist to his face. Once he knew the man couldn't move, he rifled through his pockets until he found a phone.

"9-1-1, what is your emergency?"

"If you want to catch the Joker, you'll send the SWAT team to 58 Harbor Dr. If you want to take him back to Arkham alive, you'll come in the next ten minutes." Batman then dropped the phone, kicked open a door, and ran inside.

He took a staircase to the top floor leading to some overhanging walkways. In an open area between the towers of boxes, a trio of camera lights lit up a ring drawn on the floor. The thugs had placed the crates with the dogs on one end. The Joker motioned for the henchman to put Jackie down in the middle. She barely reacted when she hit the cold floor, but flinched as her contorted and swollen leg got jostled. Just enough so that Batman knew she still lived.

The Joker had a camera in one hand and a tripod that gave him some trouble in the other. He finally planted the contraption on the opposite end of the ring from the dogs.

"They don't seem like the man-eating kind," the built thug said, motioning his head towards the mongrels.

Shrugging, the Joker ran his hand along the bars, prompting the dogs to snarl and go nuts at the sound. "They'll do fine. Where's my techie?"

"He said he's on his way–"

"I'm right here," A middle-aged man in a wool coat and nerd glasses appeared from between some of the towering stacks pulling a blue ethernet cord behind him. His slicked-back blond hair and hunched over shoulders acted as some sort of disguise to help others underestimate the brilliance and violence behind his eyes. He whipped out a laptop and began connecting it to the camera. "I had to go find the internet."

Jackie moaned in a sort of death rattle tone. The techie glanced over at her with a flash of confusion in his face. "Are you sure the dogs are necessary? She looks nearly dead."

"How much longer?" Joker snapped.

"I'm just about ready. Give me a minute."

Over the police scanner relayed through the earpiece in his cowl, Batman could hear the GCPD mobilizing. This would cut things short. He had to move now. While thugs littered the rest of the warehouse, he could pull off a quick attack on this trio to get Jackie to safety before things got too chaotic.

"Okay," the techie said. "We are live."

"Alright," The Joker approached the kennels and put a hand on one of the latches. "Have at her."

Batman leaped from the overhanging walkway, sending out a flurry of batarangs to break the spotlights, and landed directly in the path of a pit bull headed for Jackie's bloody body. The two forces of violence collided in a burst of teeth, grit and muscle. The dog's teeth latched onto his left arm, desperately trying to crush his bones. Batman pushed back against the dog's throat, getting the beast to back up to the kennels.

But then a second attack to his right knocked him onto his back. Now he had two sets of vicious teeth going after his face. He could barely hold them back with one hand on each dog's collar and even then, their claws did plenty of damage. As for the third, where did it go?

"Let's get some light in here," the Joker ordered. Several men illuminated the scene with some high powered flashlights. One of the dogs flinched at the light shining in his eyes, and Batman took the opportunity to kick him off. While the one dog grabbed his arm and tore his head back and forth in an effort to rip some flesh off, he found a small grenade on his utility belt and threw it at the other one. The blast went off and the dog screamed. It then whimpered as it limped away from the scene.

For the first dog, he retrieved something he packed just for the occasion. A small syringe with a big enough dose of tranquilizer for a large animal slipped into his hand. He grabbed the dog by the throat and jabbed the needle into what he hoped would be a main artery. It took a few desperate moments for the drug to take effect. While he waited for the dog's grip to relax and its senses to sway, he readied a second dose for the third dog. When he finally fell over, he still had Batman's hand in his mouth.

But there was still a vicious growling. Batman scrambled to his feet and found the third dog, a massive black mongrel possibly related to a Great Dane, standing over Jackie – protectively. Whenever one of the Joker's goons would make a move, he would snap his head toward them and let them know they would not be messing with her.

Speaking of all those men with big sticks and guns, why weren't any of them shooting or attacking? They had all of them surrounded and the exits blocked, but they just stood there watching the scene. "Well?" he snarled. "What are you waiting for?"

Appearing from behind the glare of the flashlights, the Joker picked up the camera and directed it at Batman. "Change of plans, Gotham. Tonight, you get to see the death of Batman, live from a mysterious warehouse on the docks. Doesn't get more villainous than that." Following his direction, the men closed in around them.

In the back of his mind, or rather running in his left ear, the police scanner played out the SWAT team's setup around the warehouse. Somehow, they also had a line into the place, eyes on all the combatants through each security camera, and a web page open to the Joker's live feed. One thing Batman knew that the thugs surrounding him did not: the SWAT team will breach in 3 … 2 …

Doorframes shattered as doors burst open, glass shattered at every side, and armored armed policemen made their noisy breach. In the same instant, Batman let off several smoke bombs and disarmed the two closest thugs with quick decisive blows. The men about to attack him suddenly became lost in confusion and panic. With no idea who exactly to aim at, they went for the safety of the towers of product.

Batman dove for his first priority, Jackie, only for someone's foot to kick him squarely in the chest. Falling to the floor, the attacker jumped on top of him with a knife in his hand. "You called the police?!" the Joker screamed incredulously, punctuating his fury with an attempted stab to his chest. "Are you really that _useless_?"

While the armor could deflect most knives, it still had that annoying issue of weak points at the separation of the plates. The knife came down again. A tap on his elbow redirected the attack. When the Joker's blade hit the ground, he used his body's leverage to turn them over and give him the advantage. "I swear to God, you are going to pay for what you did to Tex."

"What, me? You're the one that got all soft, letting your sidekick do all the heavy lifting."

He buried a fist into the Joker's side, again and again. He wanted to beat the Joker's flesh into the ground until all he would be hitting was blood and concrete, but all he got in return was laughter. Laughter, and a surprise spray of sawdust in his eyes. Batman steeled himself for the blinding attack, but when the Joker sucker punched him, he lost all sense of where everyone should be.

He spent three precious seconds blinking away the irritation, only to look up at the Joker coming in with an iron bar in a wide baseball swing. Almost faster than he thought possible, he caught the offending blunt object and twisted the Joker's hand. "Is that all you've got, princess?" he taunted. To make his point abundantly clear, he pushed with just a bit more pressure until his wrist popped and dislocated. Instead of screaming like he was used to, the Joker howled with laughter. "There's the Batman we all know and love!"

Out of his peripheral vision, Batman watched the dog standing over Jackie draw closer to the ground with his ears down low and his teeth bared. No doubt the gunshots, shouting, smoke, and dancing lights added to the mutt's instability. With advantages few and far between, if he only had one ally in this fight, might as well use it. With another simple motion, Batman pushed the Joker backwards so he was stepping over Jackie's body.

Quick as a hungry abused attack dog with a grudge and nothing to lose, the mongrel leaped at the Joker. While the two wrestled in a bloody match, Bamtan found the way to Jackie cleared of all foot traffic. He scooped her up, careful not to jostle her swollen, broken and infected leg too badly. If it did hurt, her pale and bruised purple face showed little to no reaction.

He lost sight of the Joker and the dog in the smog, but the tell-tale shouts and gunshots informed him that he would just have to let this go and hope the massive SWAT force would catch him. They needed out _now._

Between a pallet full of recycled cardboard and a pile of shipment to go out the next day, the space had to be narrow enough to avoid being a kill-box. He darted straight for it, surprisingly nimble with a 5' 4" girl dangling in his arms. With all the criminals to worry about, the policemen hardly noticed an out-of-place Batman escaping through the hallway to the employees' garage.

As much as he wanted to get her out of there, he had to know she was still alive. In a pocket of inactivity and vacancy, he knelt down to check her vitals. "Tex! Tex, wake up!" Batman shook her as gently as he could manage. When that didn't work, he pulled the glove off his right hand with his teeth, and tested for her pulse. At least blood still flowed in her veins, even if it felt incredibly faint. "Jackie, please wake up."

Her eyes flickered open with a struggle, but when she did, a smile filled her face. "Batman."

A brief sigh of relief escaped his lungs. "How are you doing?"

"Not good." Tears sprang to her eyes and her voice shook with exhaustion and pain. "I just want this to end."

"Don't worry, you'll be in a hospital before you know it."

She shook her head. "I'm not going to make it there."

"Don't talk like that," he ordered. "If you're still breathing, you've still got a chance."

Her eyes wandered, losing their ability to stay focused on his face. So she just closed them and set her head back down on his chest plate. "It's nice not to be alone."

One thing he knew about shock – even if a person wouldn't normally die from their injuries or trauma, shock setting in could kill a person easily if they believed they were done for. Determined to not lose her, Batman picked her back up and moved as quickly as he could.

He wove through a storage room with aisles of rolling shelves that reached to the ceiling, keeping to the dark parts of the room. Pushing open a door with his back, he slipped into the garage. At that second, he realized as he turned around that he was nose-to-nose with a surprised SWAT team member who had just taken down one of the Joker's men. He had the thug on the ground under his knee, making sure his plastic cuffs were secure.

"Freeze!" he shouted, aiming his sidearm at Batman's heart with one unsteady hand.

"Wait – "

Reacting in panic, the cop fired. The bullet hit him somewhere in the abdomen, though not as hard as he was used to, and he dropped to the ground, Jackie rolling out of his arms. Before the cop could fire at him again, Batman retaliated by grabbing the cop's wrist with the gun, slamming it into a nearby shipping crate, and then knocking his head against it to get him dazed or unconscious. Quick, somewhat painful for him when he would wake up and discover he had a broken wrist, and mostly efficient.

He turned Jackie's body so her face wasn't in the ground and searched for injuries. Blooming across her chest was a growing blood flow from a through-and-through gunshot wound. In through her back, out through her ribcage.

Ripping off a piece of his cape, he balled it up, trying to stop the gushing blood. But years of experience of dealing with catastrophic and fatal wounds informed him that the slowing flow meant something far worse. He put his bare fingers on her carotid artery, but the unfocused gaze from her eyes already told him what he feared.

He swallowed back whatever emotions threatening to blow his control, and set her head gently down on the ground. With a steady hand, he closed her eyelids and returned his kevlar enforced glove to its proper place.

As he stood, the open areas of the garage filled with SWAT team members. A cursory sweep of the area showed that every single possible exit was being blocked off by policemen. Even Gordon had gotten himself involved. Although he seemed to have decided to stand _very_ far behind the big guns. Batman could tell that despite their numbers, they still feared him as they didn't make any move to take him down. Not yet.

"Batman, stand down," someone ordered over a megaphone. "You are under arrest."

"Did you catch the Joker?" the Batman asked, not making eye contact with any of them.

"Put your hands where we can see them!"

"Did. You. Stop. Him?" he snarled.

He made brief eye contact with the Commissioner who shook his head quickly. He got away. Again.

His hands slowly raised a few inches as his brain raced with options. He needed to get away and stop the Joker. He would only let one person stop him, and that one person was the Batman. The blood had to stop somewhere. The more his mind raced, the more options he ran out of.

A burst of electric light filled the warehouse, followed swiftly by a shockwave that pushed everyone within a forty yard radius backwards a few steps.

"Wooooo! Yeah! And _that_ is how you disarm a G79 Argon Proton bomb!" a young woman's voice shouted as soon as the light disspated. The smoke cleared, revealing a woman dressed simply in jeans, sneakers, and a dark red hoodie holding a pair of pliers in each hand high above her head in a victory pose, her red braid coming to rest after her enthusiastic pump of excitement. And then, just as quickly as she had appeared, her face fell into something resembling hardened focus and she dropped the pliers. Probably had something to do with the multitude of armored cops with guns aimed in her general direction or Batman slightly holding his hands up in defeat. "I think maybe I shouldn't be here."

Not knowing what to make of the sudden appearance of this woman, the SWAT team made adjustments to account for her, moving into formation to take her down if need be.

She backed up slowly, examining her options and trying to figure out whether or not the men wanted to kill her. She nearly tripped when she saw the body of Jackie. All blood drained from the woman's face at the sight. A face that had Jackie's same eyes, nose, lips... "Oh. I _really_ shouldn't be here," she whispered.

"Freeze!" a particularly headstrong cop shouted at her, pointing his gun at her in the process. "Step away from the Batman!"

Somehow, the threat of being gunned down for allying with the Batman didn't faze her. Her eyes quickly scanned her surroundings, taking especial notice of the Dark Knight and the body. Despite not wearing Tex's easily recognizable armor, Batman couldn't help but think of the vigilante with her light footsteps, unusual calm, and clever eyes that had an idea behind them. She caught his gaze and gave him a wink. "I have a better idea."

A small device appeared in her hand which she pressed like a detonation trigger. Both the SWAT team and Batman braced themselves for a blast, but instead came a rush of silence. While the police scrambled in confusion for a moment, Batman dropped his last smoke bomb to disguise his exit. The woman darted out from the smoke, not a footprint to be heard, grabbed his hand and just ran for whatever looked like an exit.

As their feet pounded the cement, air rushed through their lungs and doors slammed open and shut, Batman found himself searching for the sounds he expected to greet his ears. Instead, he felt like his entire head had been stuffed into a thick pillow. The woman didn't know exactly which way to go, but she avoided each black armor clad man with precision, sticking to their blind spots and the areas from which they glanced away. Left here, dart around that man, go along the wall there. She made every turn feel like a pique turn.

Once outside, Batman yanked her a different direction and took them to the shadows of the neighboring building's alleyway. The further away they ran, the more sounds he could tell remained suspiciously absent – the blood rushing in his ears, the movement of his cape in the wind that pulled it against his shoulders, the hiss of radio static that normally got drowned out in a fight. By the time they came upon the Tumbler, he could at least feel a distant beat of helicopter blades. He tried not to let the disorientation of seeing the helicopter itself much closer than his brain judged distract him from opening the hatch of the Tumbler, climbing inside and identifying an escape route.

The woman – well, girl really – produced the tiny device again and clicked it once more. Sound rushed back in a deafening wave, briefly shaking his brain in his skull. "Drive! Drive! Drive!" she shouted at him. He was only too eager to obey the only voice of reason still screaming in his ears.

"This is so cool," she remarked with a bright smile over her face.

"Who are you?" Batman snapped.

With a smug smile, she stretched out the dramatic silence. "My name is Jacqueline Harkness. I'm a time traveler, and I am your biggest fan!"


	48. Chapter Forty-Seven

I remember a sense of dread hitting me in the stomach hard enough to wake me up from a drugged sleep.

I remember grainy voices, bats doing whatever it is they do in the dark recesses of caves, Alfred begging me to go back to sleep and wait for Bruce to come back. Let him tell me what happened. Then an order for several ambulances, animal control, and the medical examiner's office.

One casualty. Identity couldn't be confirmed just yet, but the body was suspected to belong to one Jacqueline Harkness.

Not really sure how I got here, but I did. Curled up in Jackie's room, I watched headlights and police lights and helicopter search lights cross the window. The landlord had made an attempt to start fixing the apartment up, but I knew where he hid the spare key. At least all those nasty things spray painted on the walls now bore a cheery lavender tone.

Should I be worried about all these lapses of memory? I'm choosing to say yes, but not right now.

"Of all the places in all of Gotham, why on earth would _this_ be your safe spot?"

Oh, yeah. The Joker walked in a couple minutes ago. He stood over me with blood dripping from one arm, a black eye – hard to tell under all the makeup – and a bouquet of roses he probably stole from a grocery store he passed earlier.

"Tracked my cell phone?" I asked.

"Followed you from Mr. Wayne's place. Don't know how you didn't get pulled over for a DUI the way you were driving. Probably could have killed somebody."

Nice thing about mental breaks is that it justifies any behavior. I jumped to my feet with a warrior's undecipherable yelling, and just started hammering at him with my fists. Face, chest, stomach – heck, I probably even tried to kick him in the gonads. I just wanted him to hurt, and I wanted to get all of this acidic rage out of my stomach and spew it on him with my screaming. "YOU KILLED MY SISTER! _YOU KILLED HER! YOU KILLED JACKIE!_ "

He didn't say anything. For the first time in this whole ordeal, the Joker was silent. Even when I wasn't watching video of him torturing my sister, his voice had been right there in the back of my mind. The only one making noise here was me. And soon I couldn't scream anymore. I gulped in wet gasps of air and soon broke down into sobbing. My hands grabbed onto his coat lapels, holding my face in his chest. His arms wrapped around my back to keep me right there.

I realize that I should not have felt safe right there with a terrorist rubbing my back and telling me everything would be okay and that it wasn't his fault because he wasn't the one that shot her –

"What, what?" I wiped tears off my face as they had suddenly found reason to stop.

"I didn't kill her."

I pushed off him and out of his arms. Absence-of-danger feeling gone. "Don't even try that lie on me. Why are you here?"

"To see you, Doll-face!" He took me by my arms and flashed a yellow-toothed grin at me.

"Great, you've seen me." I looked to my left at a torn and disfigured purple sleeve. "And your arm is bleeding. All over me."

Somehow, he had to do a double take when he saw the blood dripping from his arm down to mine. "Oh, yeah. Can you help me out with that?"

"After what I saw you do to Jackie – "

With his left hand, he pulled a knife out of his pocket. "I can give you your own grin left-handed. Those never look as good."

I rolled my eyes and walked him back to the bathroom. "Sure. Why not."

In a pinch, dental floss is strong, sterile, and easy to sew skin with. This is all according to my 'sometimes I get into interesting situations, let me tell you about them,' Mom. And fortunately, the landlord hadn't gotten around to cleaning out my left-behind hygiene items in the medicine cabinet/mirror. I sat on the counter top and took the Joker's arm in my hands to see what I was working with. "The thing about dogs is that it's hard to ask them where their loyalties lie."

In a show of defiance, I took the Joker's knife out of his hand and used it to cut away the sleeve of his coat, then his shirt. All of it dripped with blood. After tearing it away, I had him run the wound under the tap. With the dirt, makeup and blood gone, I could see that only the skin seemed to be broken. The dog left his muscle intact. That made it more straightforward to sew together. Jackie must have used the dental floss trick because I found a needle in the medicine cabinet as well. "I have to warn you, I've never done this before."

"It's like sewing up a rag doll. Nobody cares how badly you do it. No one except the doll."

"I also have a vindictive streak." I jabbed the needle into his skin at the beginning of the tear.

Up and down, just like quilting. If you do have to practice stitching skin together, I highly recommend doing it to an enemy first. Making mistakes – pushing a little too deep, making the gash line up a bit crookedly – didn't bother me one bit. It felt a bit therapeutic too. He knew what I was doing. Instead of flinching in pain, the smile lines in his eyes tightened and his breathing on my neck relaxed and deepened. It smelled like day old Marshmallow Mateys breath. So I turned his face away from mine.

"Breathe that way," I said.

"What if I don't want to?"

"Then hold it."

I continued to sew up his torn skin with absurdly steady hands, wiping away new blood with a tissue as I went along. Finally I tied off the dental floss with a surgeon's knot and cut the tail end off with his switchblade. He took a look at his arm in the bathroom light, angling it this way and that. "Wow, you did nearly as good as I did my first time around."

I don't think I needed to guess who his first sewing test subject was.

My final touch was a splash of iodine and a healthy coating of gauze to prevent infection. On second thought, I wouldn't mind if his arm got infected and fell off. I jumped off the counter and began washing my hands, the Joker standing right behind me with his mouth opening and closing like he was looking for something to say. "I was just wondering, did you want to go out with me?"

I shut off the water just as my brain crashed and rebooted with the conflicting inputted data. "What?"

"See, I was thinking I could show you around my neighborhood, have you meet the family, we could crash a party or get some dinner. … What do you say?"

A date with the Joker. This couldn't possibly end badly. For someone who expressed his obsession with certain individuals with gasoline, firepower and bloodshed, this was a change of his pace. I examined his face closely, trying to read his plan for me, but I all found were some surprisingly soft brown eyes behind shoe-polish black makeup. "Uh, let me go put on something a little more comfortable."

He may have been a bit shocked at my unexpected compliance, which is why he allowed me to slip out of his grasp, hand him a toothbrush, go to Jackie's room and close the door. Taking a deep breath of air that had a distinct absence of my sister, I collected my wits and attempted to process what the Joker wanted from me. Sex? A hostage to use against Batman or the police? A new recruit? A partner? Oh lord, no.

One thing I do know: I have only one outfit in mind that will keep me feeling a little comfortable in his presence. With some help from a wooden baseball bat still hidden in the closet, I broke through the floorboards in the corner of the room by the bed. I tore away the wood until I got to the package I buried here some weeks ago. Wrapped in a black plastic bag and folded neatly was Jackie's red and black armor.

I pulled on the pants, struggling to zip them up. But after a few moments of maneuvering, they suddenly relaxed to fit perfectly to my 'I've had one too many pizza nights lately' belly. I imagine with all the physical activity Jackie normally did, she had some mighty fine abs and buns of steel. The corset fit in much the same way, although it was stiff, not constrictive. Then the jacket. I noted with some bemusement that her – er – chest volume was a bit larger than mine.

Looking in the mirror, I almost saw her again. The hair and eye color was wrong, but I could see how some folks often mistook us for each other. The Harkness girls, now down to one. The Joker would enjoy the implications of my choice of outfit. As a final touch, I brushed my hair out, still a bit oily from lack of a recent shower, tied it up in a pair of pigtails, and then added some basic black eyeliner and mascara.

I opened the door, swinging my baseball bat onto my shoulder. The Joker's eyebrows shot up. Despite the stringy green hair, appalling use of makeup, and purple polyester suit torn to shreds, he looked like a kid seeing his prom date coming down the stairs.

"Well, puddin'," I said, "Should we get going?"

* * *

"Now this is the most exclusive place in all of Gotham," the Joker said. From inside a sedan made in the early 90s and probably not cleaned since the late 00s, we waited around in a small park. The place barely had any trees, the picnic tables had homeless people lying on them, and junkies seemed to be the only ones enjoying the dilapidated playground. On three sides, blocky, beige project housing stood in compliment to the poverty and lack of city council interest the park provided. "95% of the population wouldn't dare set foot here. 98% after sundown."

"Can't imagine why."

"I can't either. Doesn't it look just like home to you?" He scrambled over to my side to lean over my lap and point out the window at a single floor duplex with smoke stained walls. "That's where Billy used to live. We used to be best friends back in my younger days. But then he changed schools and moved away when I started filling his backpack with the dead kitten's I'd find lying around. Some kids just can't take a joke."

"Did you find the kittens dead, or were they sleeping?"

His face drew back in a horrified expression. "What kind of a monster do you take me for?" Without waiting for an answer, he pointed out another house, this one with some racist slurs written across the door. "Now that house, that house belonged to Ol' Man Thurgood. Nobody in the neighborhood liked him. Rumor had it that he enjoyed inviting the little boys over to have a good time. When the cops came around to investigate, my friends and I kept the rumors going, just to see if they would take him away. I guess they took us seriously because the whole rest of the street decided, 'Screw Justice, we'll just handle this ourselves.' Oddly enough, nobody in the neighborhood knows why he disappeared."

I leaned my head against the cool window, watching a couple drug dealers get in a fist fight. "It's not that I don't enjoy story time, but where is your friend who's supposed to meet us?"

"You don't enjoy hearing about my childhood?"

"I would if it was your childhood. These houses weren't built more than 15 or 20 years ago. There's no way you grew up here."

I'm sure he would have argued with me, given the glare he gave me, but a car that I can only describe as a G-sled – convertible, neon blue paint job with matching rims, silver plated steering wheel, booming stereo system – pulled up beside us, driven by a withered, old black man with two prominent gold teeth. Joker pulled a wad of cash out of his pocket and rolled down his window. The gang banger handed him a brown paper bag in exchange for the money.

While he counted the dough, the Joker threw the bag on my lap. "Merry Christmas," he said.

Satisfied, our independent businessman pulled away. "Pleasure doing business with you."

I opened the bag as the Joker started the car and got us back on the road. Inside I found a Walther PPK handgun, serial number filed off. I checked the magazine for ammunition, which was completely empty. I guess I shouldn't expect there to be gas in the car when I buy a new one. "What am I supposed to use this for?" I asked. "Clearly not defending myself."

"That's what I'm for, Doll-face." He swerved just a little as he dug through his pockets to find some bullets. Finally, he produced a single cartridge, handing it over to me. "There you go."

"Aw, thanks." I loaded it into the gun, leaving the safety on. One bullet is all I really need. Not just yet, though.

* * *

"Boys! I'm home!" the Joker shouted as he threw open the door. Then, like a gentleman, he stepped aside to let me enter the triple-wide mobile home.

It looked like the previous owners had taken everything including the wiring in the walls and run, and the new owners – the Joker's men – had brought in their own supplies. A noisy generator kept outside powered a few lamps and some various power tools through some extension cords running into the house through the windows. It's a good thing the trailer was in the middle of nowhere on the edge of the town or else the neighbors would have complained about the noise coming from this place. The furniture had either been left behind because it belonged in a dumpster in the first place, or rescued from the side of the road or a landfill. Two guys in weather-worn coats lounged on a couch with cigarette burns, vomit stains, and deflated cushions. The kitchen had a card table, some shot glasses stolen from a bar, and couple of chipped cereal bowls.

With a guiding hand on my back, the Joker gently pushed me towards the back of the house. There we met up with more of Joker's crew in what could have been the family room. Wood scraps and metal bands littered the room where four men and a woman worked hard on their individual projects. One of the men looked up from a delicate wiring operation on the ground. "Thought they caught you," he said. The magnifying glasses gave the older man some bug-eyes, but hard ones disappointed that the Joker returned.

"Nope. The dog did, though. Is the last shipment ready to go?"

"Just about," the woman said. As she turned to face the Joker from her project of programming a circuit board, I recognized her sharp haircut, Asian features, and narrow eyes. Most especially I spotted a triangle tattoo on her neck colored red. "We'll be cleared out of here in about an hour."

"Great. Keep an eye on this one, will you?" he said, pointing a thumb towards me. Knowing he didn't need to wait for an answer, he walked off to one of the bedrooms and closed the door.

The Joker's crew worked in silence for a bit, completely ignoring me. I took the opportunity to study the whole situation more carefully. One man had the job of assembling what everyone else had made individually. As he finished putting the final touches on the device inside a wine cask, he tapped down the lid, making it look as harmless as a few gallons of merlot. One guy had on a lead vest and lead lined gloves as he handled a canister. Another barely breathed as he worked with a block of C-4. Two more of them, from what I could see, had red triangles tattooed somewhere discreet.

As nerve-wracking as standing in the middle of a bomb-making crew felt, what set me on edge most was the phone call the final man was making. "Mm-hmm. We'll have them delivered today. Cash up front would be best." Soon he hung up and made a note in a log-book of a delivery for later this afternoon.

"So," I said, breaking my silence and theirs, "you're all Red Triangle gang, aren't you?"

"Not since the Penguin went to jail," the woman said. "Thanks to you."

"You even tried to kill me."

"And I was doing such a great job of it until Tex intervened." Had to give her that. "Really stupid of you to show up at the Iceberg in the first place. I told him you wouldn't show."

"I agree. That was stupid. Clearly I am not nearly as up to speed on the way super-villains think. Tell me, why are you all working with the Joker? And what are you doing with these dirty bombs?"

The mobster, a white man in his 30s with buzzed hair and crooked clubbed fingers picked up one of the wine casks as gently as he could manage. "The Joker made us an offer we couldn't refuse. Help him take over Gotham, he'll hold it for ransom, and we each get a slice of the payoff. If we don't help, he kills us."

"The city's never going to pay a ransom," I reminded them. "They never do."

"They won't," the Asian woman who tried to kill me once, said, straightening up from her finished product. "But with bombs in the basements of 40 of Gotham's richest families, _someone_ is going to pay up."

"Probably several of them," one of the other men said. It would be really convenient if I could get their names. However, if they're as smart as they seem, they would never give me more identifying details than a basic visual description.

So, he's going to hold Gotham's elite hostage. After blowing up Miranda Tate's mansion, the Trust Fund Brigade would have no doubts he could fulfill that threat. More than likely, even if they pay, he'll blow them up anyway. He had to have another game up his sleeve besides wanton destruction. It had to be something that would draw in Batman. Over on one side of the room, several milk crates had what appeared to be assembled bombs, far bigger than the little ones the Red Triangle gang's leftovers had finished assembling. "What are those for?" I asked.

The woman glanced over her shoulder at them. "Oh, Joker ordered them. He won't tell us where to set them up yet."

Huh.

The logbook man got another phone call. However, since they had run out of inventory, he politely turned the order down and directed them to another wine supplier. He then conveniently left the room to check on the outgoing shipment, at which point I wandered over to the book. I perused the pages. Those were some big names. Very rich names. Very spread out over all parts of the city names.

"You know why he brought you here, don't you?" the woman said, interrupting my thoughts.

"To piss Batman off," the mobster returning inside to get more casks answered for me. "He'll either recruit you or kill you."

"Let me suggest that you just join him now," the man who had been handling the C-4 piped up. "I saw what he did to the last one that said no. Joker doesn't kill em' til he breaks their mind. Tex was a hard one to break."

"Tex didn't break," the woman argued. "She's stronger than that."

"No, I was there," he replied. "At the end, she'd gone nuts talking about time traveling and stuff."

My heart leaped in my chest, rushing so much blood through my ears that I could barely hear. "Sorry, time travel?" I interrupted. "What did she tell him, exactly?"

"I dunno," he shrugged. "It just sounded like she finally fell off her rocker."

"Excuse me." I walked to the room I saw the Joker enter a few minutes before. Then I knocked loudly. It took a few good pounds on the door before he opened it up and pulled me inside.

"Are they not playing nice?" He had changed his clothes to a nicer purple suit, but only got so far as the pants, patterned silk shirt, and was working on buttoning up a green vest. He must have thought his makeup needed to be touched up because he had washed it off to start over. Without the paint, his scars stood out in stark contrast to the rest of his face, more so than with the makeup. It took me by surprise.

Crossing my arms, I recomposed my confidence and suppressed rage. "Jackie told you that she was a time traveler, didn't she."

"She might have mentioned something like that."

"She was lying."

His eyebrow went up, noting exactly how desperately I wanted him to believe that. "Really."

"We don't know exactly what happened to her when she went missing, but she did not start time traveling. It's a story she's been telling everyone to hide the truth."

He took the purple coat off the back of a metal folding chair and slipped his arms into the sleeves. "Which truth would that be? Kidnapped and trained by a mysterious government agency? Maybe some crackpot homeless religious nut took her out of the house and raped her. Ooh, maybe she was running away from an abusive father – "

I slapped him as hard as I could, leaving a ringing in the air and a smarting in my hand. "Don't you say anything about my dad!"

The look in his eyes went from mild amusement to smoldering anger. "Have I ever told you how I got my scars. C'mere." With deliberate force, he pushed me back into the wall and trapped me with my head between his arms, putting me uncomfortably close to the monster I knew he was. "See, me and my little brother decided to join the army together. What else are a couple of high-school dropouts with a druggie Mom going to do? On our second tour in Iraq, we were on patrol outside Kuwait. _Boring. Job._ But then one day, out of nowhere, there was this _boom!_ " I jumped. "This red-headed girl just appears running right at us. I froze, I guess, but John? He's used to all the suicide bombers and IEDs and roadside bombs and he just reacts automatically. Two shots, she goes right down."

A shiver went down my spine, and I just couldn't keep looking him in the eye. I shut my eyes as tight as I could.

"Hey, hey. Look at me." I struggled to obey even when he ran his hand across my cheek. "I realized the girl wasn't armed; she was just a kid. John did too. He flips out. See, you don't just endure the horrors and boredoms and stratagems of war for as long as we did without it getting to you. He gets out his knife and decides he needed to shut me up so he can run. He looks at me and says, ' _Why so furious?'_ "

Images flashed through my brain, replacing the Glasgow smile before me. Dad's short career in the military and long service with the Bureau came from a long and proud history in the Harkness family of serving our country. Draft papers, medals, release certificates, photos of gravestones, folded flags in mahogany boxes - memorabilia dating back to the Revolutionary War. But I also saw it tainted by the blood of a dishonorable soldier.

I blinked away the images as fast as I was able. "Your brother did this to you?" I said.

"What? You think just because someone is your _own_ flesh and blood that they can't hurt you?"

His words said one thing, but they pushed other unbidden memories into my head. Seeing Jackie come home. Hard, strong, aged deep into her bones. Sure she got older in the number of years she spent away from home in those two weeks, but she seemed older down in her soul. Then all of Gotham saw what pain she could inflict should she choose to. We'd already learned what Batman could do to the common man, and she aimed to emulate him. Bruises, broken bones, stitches, property damage, PTSD - these are the gifts bestowed upon the citzens by the Dark Knight and his little sidekick. How did this lethal and violent Tex replace my little sister and fool us for so long?

No, I trust Jackie. I love her. "You're playing me," I said, desperate to derail the line of thinking in my head.

"So?"

Something popped in my brain - a literal pop, not a burst of inspiration. A paradigm in my head shifted, just a little bit.

"So what?" he repeated.

My body relaxed, all anxiety and tension leaving me all at once. I stood up straighter. "It doesn't matter if you're lying to me or not," I said, vocalizing my epiphany. "I'm not."

With smug satisfaction in his eyes, his grin deepened. "Never trust anyone who can't be open about their dishonesty."

I laughed. It was a short, "Ha!" escaping from my throat. I clapped a hand over my mouth like I had done something unladylike like burp or hiccup. But really, who am I kidding? With my present company, holding it in would be rude.

So I laughed. Deep, loud, freeing laughter. I laughed until tears rolled down my cheeks and my sides ached with the effort. And then I laughed even harder.


	49. Chapter Forty-Eight

_Deep breath in._

The semi truck swung around the corner, nearly knocking over a stop sign and definitely breaking off a fire hydrant. Jenny clutched an iPhone in her hand as the car played Jello with her in the passenger seat. "Could you make the turns a little sharper, Pudding?" she said, deliberately letting a touch of pun slip into her voice at his name.

White greasepaint stained the steering wheel where the Joker handled it expertly. He spun it around again like a kid riding a bumper car, then glanced to his right as Jenny hit the door again. "Whoops. Sorry, Doll-face."

A bat rolled under her feet as the whole machine righted itself on the street. "Why do you always go for the semi-tractor trailers?" she grumbled.

"Mobile battering rams-slash-Trojan Horse."

"You'd do a lot more damage if you would just use the vans–"

"I know what I'm doing," he snapped just before groping around the floor by her feet for a crumpled up map. The truck veered to the right, knocking a few parked cars onto the sidewalks and running more than a few cars off the road before he noticed and righted the whole thing with a jolt.

Jenny snatched the map out of his hands and smoothed it out on the dashboard. "You want to turn left at South Weston. It'll be a tight fit."

With a turn of the steering wheel, the Joker plowed through the intersection, turning the semi-truck through a red light, ramming into someone in the oncoming left turn lane and pushing him all the way into the vehicle behind him. When he said 'battering ram,' he certainly meant it. The engine roared like a dragon as its gears tried to keep up with the rate of acceleration the Joker wanted to get it up to. Jenny braced herself in her seat as the lights of the High Springs Palace, a hotel and penthouse complex getaway for the rich and elite of Gotham, got closer and closer.

Aiming for the covered walkway, the truck jumped the curb, shoving several parked luxury vehicles out of its way, and went straight for the door.

The two of them slammed forward as the truck made impact with the covered walkway, the front steps and finally the building itself. The seat belts held them in securely, leaving the both of them with bruises along their shoulders. A click of the seat belt and a couple amused moans of pain, and the Joker was up and at 'em in a moment. "You alright Doll-face?"

Jenny held her head, careful not to touch her face. Neat white greasepaint covered her visage with three red diamonds painted over her right eye and cheek. She matched her date, but the contrast between his smudged and bleeding look and her precise lines stood out. Just the sort of details her mind would focus on while she still leaned into her seat belt, unable to move due to the shock. "I'm breathing," she finally said.

"'kay." He jumped out of the cab and unlocked the side of the trailer, sliding the panel over. Inside, a crowd of clown masked scrambled to their feet, still disoriented from their ride. They armed themselves with sidearms, knives and rifles before jumping out one by one. "Joey, you didn't puke, did you?" he asked, pointing to one of the smaller clowns.

He shook his head and hurried out of the trailer. "No boss."

As the trailer emptied of clown men, Jenny grabbed her bat and climbed over the transmission and into the driver's seat. The Joker approached her, dressed in his finest purple suit and contrasting green silk vest, and offered her a hand to help her down. "Didn't I say I would take you dancing, Doll-face?"

It was a hand she gladly accepted. She jumped out of the truck, her black high-heeled boots leaving a _thunk_ on the ground and her bat swung over her shoulder. "No, no you didn't, Mr. J."

He draped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her close as they walked into the High Springs Palace. She felt the weight of a shoulder holster under his coat. "Then can I have the first dance with you?"

"Yes you may," she replied. The crowd of clowns had already cleared out the hallway of any distractions, giving them a morbidly romantic walkway to the ballroom. She let the steady rhythm of the bass flow up through her feet and into her body. She reminded herself to be angry, confident and cold as the Joker pushed open the doors in dramatic fashion.

_Deep breath out..._

* * *

_Sixteen-and-a-half hours earlier, a few hours after getting into the Tumbler..._

_Deep breath in..._

Jackie woke up with a surge of life and a racing heart. She sat straight up, gasping for breath in the cold, dank cave crawling with bats.

"Take it easy," Batman said, catchign her by the shoulder. "You've been out for a couple hours."

"What did you shoot me up with?" she nearly shrieked. Her breathing didn't slow any.

"Epinephrine. You were about to flat line."

"I was _not_ about to flat line!" she said, smacking him in the arm for emphasis – hard. "I told you to stick me in a corner and ignore me until I woke up!"

The heart monitor by the gurney beeped an increasingly erratic and panicked rhythm, which Batman frowned at with concern. "How are you feeling?" he asked despite seeing the tell-tale signs of sweaty and pale skin.

Jackie tore off the sensors from underneath her light blue Doctor Who t-shirt, leaped off the gurney, and started jogging around the Batcave in a long lap. She didn't seem to notice her missing red hoodie or the icy water soaking up through her jeans as she dashed through standing water and little streams. She passed computer terminals with her medical information listed on the screens – a DNA analysis, a list of her current injuries, a tox screen – each compared to the reports connected to the body in Commissioner Gordon's custody. More concerning to him were the x-rays taken by him and the medical examiner's office showing a distinct mass at the base of her/their skull.

At the end of her second lap, she stopped at Batman's side and jogged in place. "Okay. I'm feeling much better now. Really cold, but much better."

He handed her the red hoodie she had come in with, then stalked off towards the monitors, letting her follow him. "I take it these bouts of unconsciousness happen frequently."

"Yes. I have this computer in my head – oh look, you have an x-ray." She spotted the x-ray machine amongst his various medical equipment tucked into a safe place in the back of the cave. "It's kind of creepy how prepared and invasive you are."

"I had questions that needed immediate answers," he replied cryptically.

"Ooh! Pick me!" She stopped her running in place to raise her hand and jump up and down like an eager schoolgirl wanting to be Teacher's pet.

That was another thing he'd noticed about her besides her lack of burn scars on her face and an intact left ear; she didn't just look younger, she acted younger too. "You're not a twin, but even if what you said is true, time travel is a scientific impossibility. I can't just overlook –"

"Batman, I woke up a day before the 1906 San Francisco earthquake," she said cutting him off. "Just go with it, you'll be fine." Her hand stayed in the air, and she looked almost pained to have to wait so long.

He had no choice but to acquiesce with his dignity somewhat lowered. "Yes, Jackie."

"Did we seriously fight a pre-sexy Poison Ivy together?"

Batman paused in his steps. "You can't know about – "

"Because while I was lying unconscious on the table and you were panicking and jabbing an epi pen in my leg, the computer in my head was getting a massive download of data. If it's been on paper, run through the press, seen by a camera and is exactly the information I need, It is now in my head. In other words, I am now all caught up so you should ask me all your questions oh my goodness the Joker filmed a lot of stuff."

As quickly as she had woken up, Jackie lapsed into a blank stare at the wall with her shoulders slumped. Batman considered poking her to make sure she still had feeling in her limbs, but then she gasped and woke back up from her sleepless slumber. Hesitantly, he sat down at the computer array to pull up the problem in question. "You didn't talk this much a month ago," he remarked.

"I'm also not normally hopped up on adrenaline, Dingbat."

"Maybe if you had given me a bit more of a heads up," he hinted as he opened the cell phone tracking software. A dot on the screen had gone gray, but the program continued to watch it for activity. Alongside it, he pulled up the police's digital investigation files, body cam footage and collected evidence. "We don't have long before the Joker makes his next move. More worryingly, I haven't been able to track down your sister. She's gone missing."

Jackie's face showed no sign of surprise at his revelation. Her eyebrows raised more in confirmation than surprise. "That's not good."

His patience for her antics had grown thin to the point of tearing, and a layer of hostility made its way to the surface. "I take it you know something about this."

"Oh yeah. Things are actually a lot worse than what you're thinking." She didn't say it with a smile, but...

"My worst-case scenarios are pretty ugly."

"The Joker laced the entire city with explosives with the help of the remnants of the Red Triangle gang who – added bonus – want revenge and have experience with trying to level the city with strategically placed bombs; Jenny's not missing, she's gone a bit nuts and joined forces with the Joker, and the both of them are such good manipulators that I'm not sure who's in charge." She let the silence hang in the air for several moments. "Isn't that nice to know ahead of time?"

For whatever reason, she refused to say out loud the conclusion she wanted him to reach. "If you're a time traveler, how much of your information came from the future?" Batman asked after several moments of though.

She smiled with a glint of mischievousness in her eye. "Now you're getting it."

* * *

_Sixteen hours after that..._

A homeless woman in a tattered coat and a red hoodie loitered around the corner of the High Springs Hotel and Penthouse complex. With a slumped over frame and averted gaze, she held out a red plastic cup with one hand and held a cardboard sign in the other. "Spare some change?" she asked repeatedly in a low voice. Every now and again, one of Gotham's rich or elite would drop their change or a few bills in the cup.

"Are you in yet?" she asked softly, her hand raised to her ear.

An especially good looking man passed by her, dropping a sizeable bill in her cup. As he got out of her earshot, he put a phone to his ear. "Just about," he replied. With a nod to the doorman, he was let inside the glitzy tower.

She looked in her cup. "Whoa, I think Bruce Wayne just gave me a hundred!"

"That was nice of him," he said as he wove through a flood of people to get through the foyer.

"That's weird, I don't remember him showing up on any of the hotel's camera feeds."

He spotted the cameras and ducked expertly to avoid putting his face on any of them as he made his way to the elevators. "Is it going to be a problem?" he asked.

Just beyond the brick, glass and steel a few hundred yards away, Jackie closed her eyes and scanned through images in her bran, perusing the events of the future. "Doesn't look like it. We should be fine."

"Good." The doors shut on a nearly empty elevator with a billionaire standing casually in a corner with his face away from prying eyes electronic or otherwise. When the only other occupants – a young college aged man with a blonde sorority girl headed for his parents' penthouse – left the elevator, Bruce pressed a small device in his coat pocket. A second later, the video feed cut out as a strange surge of power left the elevator car independent from outside controls. He then pressed the button for the bottom-most floor. "I'm in," he reported.

"Copy. You've got fifteen minutes."

"That's it?"

"I told you it would be tight. Get moving."

The doors opened and Bruce stepped out into a hallway with chairs stacked up along the walls and a few serving carts strewn along the way. The kitchen, a room being heavily used tonight, was brimming with activity, but no one had any reason to be in the hallway with the elevators yet.

From his heavy winter coat, he pulled out a small, circular black object with claws on one side meant to grip to surfaces with a simple push. Hooked to the inside of his coat was a series of about twenty of these devices. He probably should have been a bit worried carrying so much live C-4 strapped to his body, but a promise from Jackie that they would not blow up before their time gave him some reassurance. That, and he had a layer of body armor underneath the heavy wool coat gave him extra confidence. There are only so many ways he could smuggle the Batman armor into the building in broad twilight. Bruce placed a charge in the ceiling behind a florescent light fixture, then headed off to the kitchen.

He and Jackie had spent over an hour choreographing this walk. The kitchen, generally a hotbed of activity anyway, was busier tonight with a party about to happen in only a few short minutes. And she wanted him to rig about seven of these charges in the ceiling during this period. The place buzzed like a hive under attach with caterers rushing everywhere, shouting orders to their staff, and banging pots and pans for no reason at all. No place to hide, and no doubt he'd stick out like – well – a billionaire not invited to the party hanging out downstairs in the kitchen.

"Jackie..." he started.

"I do this all the time," she radioed back. "I can still walk you through the moves if you want."

He took a deep breath and held an explosive in each hand. As much as he wanted that crutch, he knew Jackie needed to be doing her own thing, which she claimed was vital to the entire operation. He took a deep, cleansing breath. "I'll be fine."

"Okay," she said, not entirely believing his lies. "On my mark. … Walk."

Bursting through his own hesitation, Bruce strode forward confidently. Heart racing with trepidation, his feet moved with the muscle memory Jackie had pounded into him. Three steps, set charge, turn, move cart, place charge, duck, walk...

Bruce couldn't comprehend how the cooks could not see him or interact with him as he wove through the kitchen, lining the ceiling with strategically placed bombs. He almost wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it all, or check that he wasn't actually invisible, but he knew he had to follow Jackie's instructions to the letter. Every now and then, she gave him a bit of corrective instruction over his earpiece, prompting him to move faster, turn sharper, don't forget the bucket of dishes!

With the kitchen finished, he moved on to the various storage rooms and the large conference room. Some required a specific number of charges in a cluster, others had just one, and a few had none at all. In one room, the charge went on the wall instead of the ceiling.

"Done," he said to Jackie. He took one of the disused closets and barricaded the door. "What's your progress?"

Outside, the homeless girl wove through a crowd of socialites suddenly arriving at the building. They laughed at the sight of her, flinched away as she approached them, threw money at her to get her away and complained to the doorman when they were out of earshot. Jackie picketed a phone she had lifted moments ago from a blonde heiress dragging her poor Jersey Boy boyfriend behind her. "I've got two more minutes," she said, "and about five more phones to grab. Ooh!" He slipped her hand into another drunk teen's pocket and took his iPhone. "Four now."

"Any sign of the Joker?" He pulled of his coat, now empty of the weight of the charges, and removed the thin layer of clothes covering his body armor.

"No, not yet. He's not going to surprise me, I promise." A group of frat boys deliberately bumped into her, knocking her over. As she stood back up, she put two more phones in her coat pockets.

He unhooked his cowl from his belt, placing it over his head, and deactivated the backpack form of his cape. Within minutes, Bruce Wayne was gone and Batman was in his place. He piled all the discarded clothes in one lump and set them on fire. "I'm in position."

Jackie opened someone's purse and took out a phone and a candy bar. By that point, someone had bothered to call the cops and a police car pulled up to the curb. "And I've been made. I'll see you in a bit." The last phone she needed was in the hands of a girl texting someone furiously. So she simply snatched it out of her hand and ran.

"Hey, stop him!" the girl screeched as Jackie darted through the crowd, tearing off her coat and hoodie as she ran. By the time she got around the corner, the policeman had gotten out of his car and was trying to run down the street after her.

Jamming a hand between the door and its frame, Jackie broke the lock of an emergency exit of the hotel and slipped inside. As the door's alarm went off, she tiptoed to a suite that happened to be empty and left somewhat ajar and went inside before security got there to investigate.

The room was dark, but all she needed was time to make a few phone calls. She took a seat on an overly cushioned chair and emptied her loot onto the desk from the pockets of the coat and hoodie hanging over her arm. Eight phones in total, a handful of change and a crumpled up $100 bill landed on the desk. Underneath her coat, Jackie had worn a black leather motorcycle jacket that zipped in the back, a pair of dark jeans and black ankle boots. Batman had frowned at the ensemble, but she reminded him that at the moment, she was not a costumed vigilante named Tex. She just couldn't be recognized at the moment.

Jackie plugged a small device into one of the phones, scrambling its location to one of her choosing. Then she made a call.

"9-1-1, what is your emergency?"

"I think I have a bomb in my basement," she said with a touch of panic in her voice.

"What is your location?" the dispatcher asked.

"4439 Monroe Ave. Is there any way you can tell my neighbors? I'm worried I won't be able to tell them."

"We'll put out a reverse 9-1-1 – "

"Great!" With that, she hung up and moved on to the next phone.

"Won't this change history or alter the timeline?" Batman asked.

"Oh, no, I'm fixing it. Did I not explain … When I came home, or will come home, I altered the timeline and I'm trying to fix it now so it stays immutable."

"But you're not just saving lives, you're doing so with knowledge that will create a paradox – "

"Batman!" she snapped. "I have the paradox stuff under control. Now please let me make seven more false 9-1-1 calls that I can listen to eight hours ago and copy word-for word now."

The back and forth of tenses was enough to give him a headache, but the official beginning of the party with its thumping bass and screaming party-goers directly over his head was doing the trick. So he shut up and let Jackie get the last of her pieces ready. He went over the plot of what was supposed to happen in the ballroom upstairs, making sure to slow his breathing and relax.

_Deep breath out..._

* * *

The music abruptly stopped as the clowns filed into the ballroom, forcing apart the groups on the dance floor and pushing them back against the walls. One punched out the DJ and took over the sound settings, getting a cordless microphone out from the DJ's box of tools. The Joker and Jenny swept in like the king and queen of prom, filling the empty space with their silent threats. Without a word, they hushed the entire crowd of young socialites and up-and-comers. Their walk was slow, deliberate, sharp.

The clown manning the speakers tossed the Joker the microphone. Everyone waited with fear and anticipation for what he would say, but instead he handed it to Jenny. She slipped out from under his arm to address them herself. In one hand, she held up an iPhone, open to an event page on Facebook. "I got your invitation," she said. "This, 'Death of a Vigilante Party.' Classy. Let's see, 'Tex is dead! Come dance all night long to celebrate the victory of freedom over fear-mongering, hypocritical vigilantes. Fifty dollar cover charge, proceeds benefit the task force to take down the Batman. One down, one to go.' Well, I hope you don't mind that I brought a few friends. They're the sort of people my sister was working to put away before she was murdered, so I thought you might be happy to meet them. In fact, I think Mr. J would like to help you out with your charitable organization."

She tossed the microphone back to him, and turned to watch the crowd for kids liable to try to be heroes. Her bat pointed at one boy tensing up with a champagne bottle in his hand. One of the clowns pulled him out of the crowd, then hit him in the gut with the butt of his rifle, then over the head with another blow. A few girls screamed. Message received.

"Let's keep this civilized," the Joker said. "Nobody needs to be a hero tonight. I mean, that's why we're here, isn't it? Rebelling against heroes and vigilantes?" He walked along the edge of the crowd, a switchblade held in his hand like a paintbrush. Not a single eye would make contact with his.

One of the decorations they'd hung up for the night was a dummy dressed in red and black with a wig hanging off its cranium and a picture of Jackie's face glued on, strung up with a rope. The Joker spotted it dangling behind the crowd, tempting him. So in a burst of white hot anger, he threw the knife directly into the dummy's face with enough force to knock it backwards.

"It's so _pathetic_ how you kids think your opinions _matter!_ What, you're capable of voting and using Facebook and suddenly you're important?" he asked with a dramatic shrug and a disgusted sneer. "You really have no idea how useless your generation really is. None of you have _any_ idea what it means to suffer. To experience loss. To worry about a loved one."

The Joker took to the center of the dancefloor, raising a hand to quiet the murmuring and questions. His clowns shouted at the socialites to be quiet and stay still. Jenny wandered over to his side, keeping a sharp eye on the people who might cause problems. She also noticed the tasteless decorations, mostly featuring her sister in various cartoon death poses.

From his pocket, the Joker produced a detonator with a red button. The sight of it made the party-ers scream in panic. "Oh, so you know what this is. Guess I don't have to explain it. We should play a game. Don't you think, Doll-face?"

Jenny gave him a half smile, envisioning the strategic terror they had devised. Before she could say anything, though, a hooded figure dressed in black descended from a rope suspended by the ceiling. It landed thirty feet away on its hands and knees. It wore a leather jacket, jeans, sneakers, and a plated ninja mask that obscured all but its eyes. He or she was lean, graceful and silent. Jenny narrowed her eyes at the figure, then widened them in disbelief. "No..."

The figure crouched to the ground as the clowns approached her from all angles. Looking into the Joker's eyes, she said, "Tick tick boom."

With a deafening crash, the floor fell.

* * *

Batman watched the ceiling collapse before him. Following the plaster and wooden supports were three masked clowns in the same hallway, tumbling head over foot. Quick as a spark, he grabbed the first one in reach and threw him into the wall. Still stunned, he barely fought back before Batman punched him in the jaw and kneed him in the stomach.

The other two tried to get their bearings, but Batman was on them before they could. He jumped and hit one on the way down with a fist, then twisted his arm and dislocated the clown's shoulder. Then he kicked the next man's knee to the side and punched him in the neck. Fifteen seconds, and three out of twelve men were already down.

This, too, Jackie had him practice. He moved to the left, into a large conference room where one clown was getting his gun ready to fire. Unfortunately for him, Batman already had a batarang in his hand, which soon went flying right into his trigger finger. Before the man could fully process the pain in his head, Batman rushed him and collapsed his trachea with a jab to his throat. He disarmed the man, breaking down the gun, and moved along.

So this is how Jackie worked. It felt like a dance as he rushed from room to room, knowing exactly where the Joker's men would be and how to disarm them. It barely felt fair.

He ran into Jackie, who was breaking a man's wrist and ankle as she pulled his guns away from him, in the kitchen. As the man's head hit the side of the prep table, he flipped a plate and launched a few rolls her way. She caught one and lifted her mask to take a bite. "You good?" she asked. Meaning, did you do exactly what I told you to do? He replied with a nod.

Just down the hallway, the Joker had managed to get to his feet after falling into a closet that had a smoldering pile of fabric. He spotted the Batman in the kitchen talking to the mysterious visitor. He started down the hall with a knife in hand, only to have someone tug his arm back sharply. Jenny had a soot-stained face streaking with sweat. Her wide eyes spoke more of the terror she felt than her desperate attempt to change his course. "What?" he snapped.

"You can't win this one," she insisted. "We have to go. Now."

"Why?"

"That's Jackie. This is all her style. She has complete control here. We have to leave!"

Considering all his men had been taken out in swift fashion, maybe pragmatism would serve him best at the moment. The Joker took Jenny by the wrist, leading her to safety as he pushed past the rubble to find the stairway near the elevators. They ascended, joining the evacuating crowd. The rubble in their clothes and hair served to somewhat disguise them, ultimately getting them out of the building.

Once outside and near the wrecked semi-truck and cars, Jenny pushed him roughly into the side of the trailer. "You said she was dead!" she screamed. "You lied to me!"

"Look, there's a difference between lying and making a mistake," he said with a cheerful voice. "Maybe we could settle this someplace where the building _isn't_ exploding from the inside out –"

"Did you even see her die?"

He rolled his eyes, recounting the previous day's activities. "Well, no. Not personally. The police said she was dead. At the same time, though, they said I hadn't kidnapped her, so..." his tongue darted out, wetting his lips in thought. "Ooh, I know exactly who to talk to. Come on."

Ignoring her furious eyes, the Joker stalked off to find a car to hijack. "Who?"

"The cop who shot her, obviously. Then we can put your bat to good use."

Jenny looked down at the bat she hadn't realized she had kept a firm grip on. "Oh. Yeah. Let's do that," she said with a greedy smile.

The Joker found a green Chevy Camaro with black racing stripes. It also had a driver in it at the time. All it took was one grin, showing off his yellowed teeth, to persuade the old man to jump out of the car with the keys still in the ignition. The Joker and Jenny jumped in, pulling away with squealing tires. Then, with a flash of maliciousness, the Joker pulled the detonator out of his pocket and pressed the red button.


	50. Chapter Forty-Nine

"Wouldn't it be easier if we just went to the Gotham Gazette?"

"I doubt whoever shot my sister has been suspended yet," I replied over the din of the street. "Plus the police probably know that if they release his name, people like us will try to kill him."

"Who'd have thought the GCPD could make a smart choice."

The Joker held my hand as we practically skipped through the crowded streets. The bombs had ignited a terrifying chaos fueled by fear and flame which we could no longer drive through, so we went by foot. Sirens constantly wailed in our ears as they rushed from fire to riot to car accident to false alarm. With no idea what to do or where was safe, Gotham spilled out onto the streets and streamed to evacuation centers around the city. Even though the Joker held my hand like a giddy schoolboy, I knew the panic all around us had him caught up in a state of ecstasy. "Isn't it just beautiful?" he said, nearly spinning around to take it all in.

"Yes, Puddin'," I replied. I was not as fond of the nearly impenetrable crowd threatening to suffocate us.

By the time we reached the police station, the sun had fully set and the street lights hadn't come on like they should have. Before we went up the steps, the Joker stopped me and spun me around to face him. "Hang on, we need to sell this." With his coat sleeve, he wiped the makeup off my face. He wasn't gentle.

"What exactly are we selling?" I asked, pushing him off.

"Just trust me." He then grabbed my wrist and roughly dragged me up the stairs. When he kicked open the doors, he wrapped a hand around my throat and held a knife to my jugular artery with his other hand, jabbing the tip in and drawing a drop of blood.

The entire police station was already in an uproar with the bombs having gone off, calls coming in and officers hurrying to book criminal offenders including a few of the Joker's men arrested at the hotel. I felt like we were a pair of ants entering a hive of cubicles, desks and human beings struggling to hold order in a city going to Hell. Not a single officer or detective noticed us until I tearfully screamed, "Help me!"

In an instant, every last gun left their holsters and trained their sights on the Joker's head. The place morphed into a different state of chaos as most of the office hit the ground and those taking our lives into their hands shouted, "Freeze!" and "Drop the knife!"

"The place looks nice," the Joker commented. "You must have remodeled."

With only a knowing exchange of glances, a certain middle-aged detective with a cynical scowl etched in his face took the lead with negotiating. "What do you want?" he asked nicely, something that didn't seem natural coming from his mouth.

Wagging a finger, the Joker said, "Ah ah," warning him away from us. "Back. I want to talk to whoever's in charge here. Where's Gordon?"

Whoever didn't have a gun quickly cleared out of the room, leaving about 15 cops - no, at least 28 if my scan of the room was right. It's hard to analyze the layout of the MCU when I was supposed to be scared out of my wits. Those who were armed took a few steps back, giving us some breathing room and them a desk to hide behind should anything go off the rails.

"The Commissioner isn't here at the moment, but you can speak to me," the detective said.

"Who're you?" Joker asked with a contemptuous sneer in his voice.

"Detective Bullock," he said. "I'm the lead detective 'round these parts. Tell me what it is you're looking for and let me see if I can help you."

"I'm looking for the name of the officer that shot Tex like an _idiot_! Or her big sister, ah, dies." He tightened his grip for emphasis, making me squirm in a genuine panic.

"Let's just stay calm, alright?" Detective Bullock said. "I'm going to have someone go look that up for me." He turned and jabbed a finger at the closest co-worker, sending him out of the room. "No one needs to get hurt here."

"No, that's just a bonus."

The knife in my throat dug in deeper, eliciting a scream from me. "Just give him what he wants! Please!"

Joker clapped a hand over my mouth, his fingers digging into my face. For acting, he was getting more and more convincing to me. "Quiet, Dollface. Mommy and Daddy are talking." I felt blood running down my neck as he twisted the knife a bit. "Look Bullock, I get the whole 'Don't negotiate with terrorists' thing. I really do. But do you really think that this is my _only_ hostage?" An uncomfortable silence fell on the station. I couldn't see his face, but I knew the Joker grinned knowing he was right where he wanted to be: in charge of the GCPD. "Jenny, be a dear and get the detonator out of my pocket, will you?"

With shaking hands, I reached back into his right coat pocket. My fingers glanced across knives, a grenade and finally brushed across a cylindrical metal object with a lever on the side. I pulled it out slowly. I really don't remember this being in the plan … or if we even had a plan at all for that matter.

"This is a deadman's switch. So if I kill Jenny…" He let go of my mouth for a second to squeeze my hand around the detonator, activating it. "Hundreds of people _will_ die."

"You have another bomb?" Detective Bullock said, mostly for the benefit of whoever was on the other end of a hidden mic. Looking closer, I could even see an earpiece. "Where is it?"

"Tell you what," Joker paused to lick his lips in contemplation. "You give me the man's name, I'll give you the bomb's location. Give me his current whereabouts, I'll give you Jenny back, alive and well." After a second, he noticed the blood on his knife. "Mostly well."

"I'm not using an officer's life to exchange his life for hers," Bullock said. His stance said he was getting ready to pounce, but was holding himself in check. "That's not how this works. My men aren't bargaining chips."

Joker scrunched up his face in disbelief. "Really? I have one, maybe more active bomb[s] in [an] undisclosed location[s] in Gotham. You're gambling all on-duty officers' lives that Gotham can be saved from _me_. You know how _crazy_ that sounds? What's one more dead cop to you? Hm? This is what you cops do: DIE. You die for _her_." He slid the knife just a bit along my neck. "You die for _them_ ," he said, pointing at the criminals in the hallway. "You die to protect society. _So do your job and FIND ME HIS NAME!_ "

* * *

"I'm beginning to miss my suit. Hope Jenny's making good use of it," Jackie grumbled.

"What happened to it?" Batman asked, innocuously hoping to prompt her tendency to talk more than she should.

"I didn't have a mission scheduled, so I didn't put it on. Then my boss called me in to defuse an incendiary device and it went off in my face."

"If the last bomb you defused yourself went off, why should I trust you with this one?"

"That one was way more complicated. Anyway, next thing I know, I'm tripping over my own dead body in the 21st century. Not many people can say that they've done that."

"A bomb sent you back in time?"

"The time machine in my head activates when I'm in life-threatening danger. It usually sends me to someplace I'm needed or where I need to fix something."

"How does it determine that?"

"You know, you ask an _awful_ lot of questions about things I probably shouldn't have brought up, and not enough about the big scary bomb that's about to kill hundreds of unarmed and already injured people," she whispered back. Batman took that as his cue to not press the issue.

Creeping down the hallways of Gotham City University's Kayne Arena, Batman and Jackie kept to the shadows in the basement. Above their heads was the dull roar of footsteps, shouted orders, crying children and screaming patients. They could imagine the scene of chaos upstairs as doctors and nurses and anyone with a basic knowledge of first-aid tried to put people back together again.

Jackie checked a handheld geiger counter just to make sure they were headed in the right direction. "The bomb should be just ahead," she whispered.

"Without a single person noticing me, you had me set charges in a crowded kitchen under a ballroom floor so only the Joker's men were affected, but you couldn't say whether the Joker's biggest bomb would be at the Kayne Arena ahead of time?" Batman muttered only partly to himself.

"It does sound kind of ridiculous, doesn't it. I wasn't entirely sure that the city was going to put an evacuation site at the arena after I got involved with you. Plus the city shut off most of the power to prevent sparking new fires, so I can't see any camera footage. I'm a little bit more blind than usual." Just before they got to a corner, she pulled back into the shadows against the wall. With a single strike into the dark, Jackie hit a man turning a corner right in the throat. He went down immediately, his AK-47 clattering across the floor. "Not that blind, though."

Jackie kept an eye on the hallway around the corner while Batman quickly disarmed and handcuffed the man. "What's the rundown?" he asked as he worked.

"Six men, two women," she recited as if from memory, "all of them thoroughly trained in hand-to-hand combat, weaponry, and incendiary devices. The Joker saved the best of the best just to guard this one bomb. Two are working on setting up the bomb in the Media Room, the rest should be in the hallways keeping an eye out for intruders like us."

"How many guns?" He gave the zip-ties a final tug before joining Jackie and continuing towards the center of the basement.

"At least twelve you'll need to take care of. I'll take the guy in the media room if you'll keep the others busy."

"Sounds simple enough," he said sarcastically. Not that he would have argued to have it any other way. Jackie being un-bulletproof as it was made him uneasy, but not distrustful of her skills. "How do you plan on getting into the Media Room without being seen?"

"By being sneaky." Jackie pulled down her ninjitsu mask, pushing some escaped strand of hair back into her ponytail with just a bit of frustration. With that plus her black clothing, she practically disappeared into the dark. "For the record, I have met actual ninjas—"

"So have I—"

"—in Japan in the 1500's, and they dress nothing like this."

With that, Jackie slipped into the shadows and completely out of Batman's sight.

The hallway to the Media Room had several branching hallways and a wide berth; to his trained eye, he only saw places for shooters to duck and cover and too far to run for his own safety - a kill box of sorts. He also noticed a pair of shoes slightly sticking out from a doorway, the glint of a gun's scope, the frozen breath of someone trying to measure theirs.

Batman took a flash grenade off his belt and threw it into the hallway. Just as the flash went off, bullets began flying around the hallway. Had he not taken off to rush the closest man, he probably would have been shot. Before the goon could get his bearings again, Batman took hold of his gun, slammed it into his stomach, and finished him off with a heavy blow to the back of his head. Spinning into a punch to his left, Batman felled a second man, then drove him into the two backing their colleague up. A knife flew at his shoulder, which he moved just in time to elbow someone in the teeth and for the weapon to glance harmlessly off his armor.

Somewhere in the melee, a small black figure crawled like a spider down from the ceiling and slipped past the door with the bomb. If it hadn't been for the six people now trying to gang up on him, he might have paid more attention to the quick and silent fight going on in that room. However, he had a woman with a white 'fro who had jumped on his back and was trying to strangle him with her knees while getting ready to snap his neck with her hands. At the same time, two others were getting back away from the fight in order to get a good shot in.

Throwing the woman off his back and into a wall, Batman sent out a flurry of batarangs at the gunmen. From the screech that soon followed, he judged he must have hit someone in the eye. Batman delivered jaw-crushing blow after sternum-cracking jabs. Some of the men could take the force of his attacks; a few others could only dart away as best they could while delivering their own rebuttals.

"You're the Penguin's men," Batman said to them. "Why are you working for the Joker?"

"A crook's gotta eat, man," said a shorter, hispanic man with a tattoo across his neck and an exceptionally talented trigger finger. A finger that Batman soon broke as he ripped a pistol out of his hand and twisted his wrist.

"Everyone knows the Joker kills everyone who works for him." Batman blocked a few punches and a decisive kick. "There's no profit in working for the clown. He might say he's holding the city for ransom, but he's only playing a twisted game."

"He's not holding Gotham hostage - we are!" A Chinese woman delivered a few jabs and her own judo throw which unsteadied his footing and knocked him down. She landed on his chest with a knife in hand at his throat. "As long as we have the bomb, we can own this city just like we're supposed to."

"Then why does Joker have the detonator?"

Suddenly, a wall exploded, hitting whoever was still standing with chunks of wall and bits of door. It gave Batman an opportunity to turn the tables on his closest attackers and knock their heads soundly together. In the light of the open wall, Jackie stood triumphantly with a handful of wires and a case of radioactive waste in her arms. "Finished! And I didn't even blow up!"

* * *

After half an hour of staying in shock, I wasn't sure if it was blood or sweat running down my neck. Judging by the fact that I was still upright, I would say sweat. My hand had spasms going through it because I was holding the deadman's switch so tightly. The police station had nearly cleared of people, with only Detective Bullock and a few others staying put to train guns on us. I could see some officers running notes back and forth from here to HQ. Gordon probably needed info from Bullock on how things were progressing, so every now and then, Bullock would whisper something to a cop, or they'd show him a note and he'd nod.

"This is getting boring," the Joker mumbled in my ear. "Do they have something yet?"

As much as he meant this question for no one, I knew he meant for me to answer it.

It was during one of these whispered data transfers to Detective Bullock that I caught a smug glance in our direction. The tension in the air shifted. From their slight shifting forward to a loss of fear in their eyes, I knew they felt like they had the upper hand.

The bomb's been found and defused and the Joker doesn't know it.

My eyes locked onto a small slip of paper carried by an officer desperate to get to Bullock. We're out of time, and that officer thought his information was important. So I took a gamble on any lingering doubt they might have had about the Joker's mystery bomb. I raised my right hand with the detonator firmly in my grasp. Then I let it fall.

I had better be right.

The whole room felt like it went into slow motion. While the officers' attention went to the falling deadman's switch, the knife around my neck disappeared and the entirety of the police station reflexively and subconsciously dove for the detonator. As if that would have made a difference. I raced forward, my eyes still focused on that slip of paper; I need a name. Just a name!

In the same moment he dropped the knife, the Joker suddenly found a grenade in one hand and its pin in the other. I snatched the paper right out of the cops fingers, and a blast went off right behind me. Rolling sideways with the concussive blast, my feet scrambled to get back to running on hard ground. Fingers latched around my wrist and yanked me away from the smoke and dust.

"Pretty bold move there, Dollface," the Joker giggled. I had no bearings whatsoever, so I depended on his guidance to get me out of the ensuing madhouse.

I have zero idea how we got outside of the police station. Or how the Joker found an unlocked police car with the keys just waiting in the ignition. Or why nobody bothered to stop us as we screeched out into traffic and nearly knocked some pedestrians over.

"Was that your first time killing untold numbers of people?" he said with excitement and glee.

I shook my head while opening up the paper in my hands. "The bomb was defused."

"That's not possible." He turned on the siren to get some people to move more out of our way.

"Did you hear a boom?" Without waiting for his answer, I read the slip of paper aloud. "Officer Jacob Hutchinson. 1008 Lariat Drive, Apartment 43C. We've got ourselves a name."

The grin on his face turned positively wicked. "Well then, let's go get you your first fatality."

* * *

" _Shave and a haircut. Two bits_ ," the Joker sang under his breath as he knocked on the rattling screen door of 43C. "Open up."

"Who's there?" a woman asked through the door.

"Please help me!" I weakly cried. "I was robbed and nobody will let me in."

She must have seen only me through the peephole since the Joker stepped aside, so she slid off a couple of chains, unlocked two deadbolts and opened the heavy door. "Are you alright?" the waif thin, brunette with a mom haircut asked as she unlocked the screen door too. "My husband's a police officer. He can help."

"Sounds like the right place." The Joker charged forward, grabbed the woman by the throat and pusehd her into the wall. The pictures her head hit fell to the floor and shattered. She began to scream, but the Joker quickly made some _shush_ ing noises and put a knife to her mouth. "We're just looking for Jacob Hutchinson."

"Mandy!" her husband shouted in panic.

With the officer's wife held as a human shield in front of him, the Joker pushed his way into the tiny apartment. "Back up, hands where I can see them, get on your knees," he ordered.

"What do you want?" the man demanded.

"Oh, this doesn't have anything to do with what I want."

I entered the apartment, which was a product of public housing, 2-3 drug dealers having lived there previously, and one dedicated family trying to patch the holes up. A cartoon network of roads on a rug with toy cars strewn about took over the living room floor. I saw children's books lying around the secondhand furniture, and a pair of sticky fingers hiding behind the couch.

Officer Hutchinson's eyes darted toward the couch, checking to see if I'd noticed his child - or children, I should say. The variety of toys hinted at more than one. Officer Hutchinson fell to his knees, slowly moving his hands up to his head. One arm was wrapped in thick gauze around his wrist. "Who are you?"

I picked up a family picture with four smiling, happy faces. "You have such a beautiful family." Walking behind the couch, I found two little boys shaking in fear. "Kids, go to your room." As they dashed off to their bedroom and slammed the door, I took a pair of handcuffs out of my pocket - benefits of riding in a police car - and cuffed his hands behind his back with only a little difficulty with his injured wrist.

With the officer restrained, Joker released Mandy. "Mandy, stay with the kids," Officer Hutchinson ordered her.

"But - "

"Do it!"

A second later, it was just the three of us in that living room.

After a deep breath, I bent down in front of the officer to look him in the eye. "Can you imagine losing your kids?" I asked. "Like, _pool!_ Gone. My parents have. Now they've got to do it again."

His eyes widened in recognition. "You're Tex's sister."

The Joker leaned over and whispered loudly in my ear, "You should ask him what he saw. Make sure she actually died."

"What did you see when you shot Jackie?"

"I didn't see her," he said, "that's the problem. All I saw was Batman."

"Did you tell him to stand down? Was he threatening you?"

"I … I must have. You know I wouldn't have stood a chance against the Batman! He's a cop killer! If I wanted to see my family again, I had to act fast. I just went on instinct."

"You have _training_ to overcome your gut instincts of fear and anger!" I shouted in his face. "Even if he was a murderer - which he is _not_ \- you are _not_ the executioner!"

"I know! I made a mistake that cost a civilian her life. It's something I have to live with the rest of my life!"

"No _I_ have to live with it!" I screamed with tears running hot down my face. I had to stand up and pace. "There is going to be a day when you realize that for a full 24 hours you forgot that you killed Jackie. Then the guilt will come crashing back as bad as ever. But at least you'll forget for a little bit. Jackie was a part of me. I am not capable of putting her out of my mind." I jabbed a finger at my temple. "She's going to be _right there_ until the day I die. Can you honestly say the same?"

Officer Hutchinson swallowed and averted his gaze. "I saw her eyes." His own eyes fell in a face etched with guilt. "After she died, I saw her eyes. All I could see was relief. relief from pain caused by _him_."

The Joker had the indecency to look offended. "I didn't kill the girl, Chuckles."

"And I didn't put her in that warehouse."

He rolled his eyes. "At least I gave you a chance, which you _screwed up_."

"What chance? Tex was going to die anyway!"

"Hey, I've seen _lots_ of people die. Tex was a trooper. She could have made it to a hospital barring any accidents -"

"You were going to have her eaten by dogs!"

" _ENOUGH!_ " I roared. "Jacqueline is dead. You've both made that explicitly clear. what remains now is punishing the responsible party." I whipped out a weighted retractable baton and held it like a baseball bat right next to the officer's face.

"Please," Officer Hutchinson said with pleading in his face. "Don't do this. I have a family."

"Yeah well I did too. It only seems fair, doesn't it?"

"Ooh, if you hit him hard and fast across the neck, you'll sever the vertebra and he'll be paralyzed," the Joker said in my ear. "Or you could go straight for the skull and kill him almost instantly. But maybe you don't want to kill him right away."

"Do you mind?" I snapped. I glared at him until he backed up. "Thank you. Neither one of you can change my mind anyway. I already know who the responsible party is."

Officer Hutchinson's entire body braced for impact. I pulled back, winding up to strike…

In the same swing, i spun on the balls of my feet and struck the Joker in the face as solidly as I've ever hit a home run in my life. as soon as he crumpled to the ground, I dove at the officer's hands with the handcuff keys. With shaking fingers, i worked desperately to unlock and free him before -

My head snapped backwards as the Joker yanked me by one pigtail and threw me off my feet into the wall. When I slammed to the floor, I heaved my body in the direction of the door, only to be grabbed by the neck and dropped into a countertop full of glass picture frames. "I give you the gift of revenge and you throw it in my face?" he screamed with blood running down one side of his face from a gash on his forehead.

If I could have responded vocally, I probably still would have giggled like a mad schoolgirl. Joker then picked me up and punched me in the gut until I fell out the door.

I got to my feet, barely, and hobbled in some direction to get away, when the Joker popped out of the corner of my eye and kicked me square in the ribs.

If only I had been watching out for the stairs.


	51. Chapter Fifty

It's weird to look into the eyes of the man who tortured me to death. Or rather, _will_ torture me _almost_ to death. Standing in the center aisle of the pews of Gotham's AME Calvary Church, the Joker and I stared each other down with no hint of moving for a weapon or preparing to attack in any way. Perhaps we surprised each other in the dark, musty church that night. I might have been far younger than he imagined, and he wasn't quite as scary in person as I thought he would be. I mean, I would probably still have nightmares about him, but I realized that I had just a little bit of power over him, and he didn't like that. He looked at me with a mix of bemusement, amusement, and has-a-lit-fuse-ment. Jenny, who I spotted tied up in a chair in the choir loft with her head hanging down, would not have felt comfortable with this at all.

"You look good for a dead girl," he said, breaking the silence, jumping down from the pastor's seat on the podium.

"Thank you. You look terrifying for a psychotic clown," I replied, continuing to make my way down the aisle, taking my steps carefully like a bride.

"So when I was busy cutting off your face, you weren't lying about being a time traveler."

I shook my head with a smile. "Can I just say that this is so cool being in the presence of the man who came _this close_ to killing me?" I held my fingers up to about an inch apart, still smiling at him. "That's a whole heck of a lot closer than all of my other enemies have come. Granted, they're busy trying to destroy the fabric of time and space most of the time, so I don't often bother to get involved with _tiny_ little terrorists who are only trying to throw their hometown into chaos. I wouldn't even be here if you didn't have my sister. But, you know, good job!" She gave him a thumbs-up.

"I would have killed you," he growled. " _I had you._ "

"I'm sure that future-me told you this, but it's worth repeating. If there's anything I've learned from traveling all over the world all throughout recorded human history, it's that even the most erratic of beats repeats. You are never going to have me anywhere I don't put myself. Sorry, you never _did_ have me anywhere — past tense and future tense get all mixed up when you're a time traveler," I said with a laugh.

"You're saying you wanted me to rip out your teeth, break your bones, beat you until your ribs shattered — "

I rolled my eyes. "What you did — will do — to me really doesn't matter as much as what I've done to you. For instance, you haven't seemed to notice that ever since I originally came to Gotham, no one has died by your hands." I stepped forward to circle him.

The Joker laughed nervously. "Oh, people have died—"

"Couldn't afford to kill anyone when you first escaped, barely had enough manpower to set up charges across the city, everyone you shot or sliced up ended up quickly in the hospital, no one actually died in a single bomb blast, and Batman and I just disassembled the one bomb that you wanted to kill a sizeable chunk of the population. Heck, I even let you take Jenny out for a night on the town just so you wouldn't kill Officer Jacob Hutchinson." I took a daring step forward to look right into his seething eyes. My heart raced as I delivered the final blow. "You didn't even kill me yourself. What kind of a pathetic excuse for an anarchist clown are you?"

With an animal roar, the Joker lashed out in his first display of unrestrained anger, his clawed hands going for my throat. But I was ready for him, and I simply grabbed his arms and squeezed. However, he must have been familiar with this move because a knife appeared in his right hand and slashed at my face. Out of necessity, I did a backwards somersault and flipped him into the pews. I stumbled away with blood running into my eye and down my neck and face. "I saw your eyes," he snarled as he regained his footing. "I saw the fear of a coward!"

"I'm sure you did! I'm just a girl; no one actually expects me to be fearless. But do you think I haven't read you? You love being in control of chaos. Batman and I have, for the first time in your life, taken control out of your hands. You've lost."

"Not unless I create a paradox."

I saw the gun, but I never heard it fire. Instead, my vision stretched long and my body flew backwards. An instant later, I tumbled forward into a poorly lit church graveyard. I'm assuming that's what it was from the dirt in my face and the cross-shaped tombstone I hit on the way down. I'd only jumped through time — what was it, yesterday? — two days ago, so it took me a minute to gather enough energy to get back on my feet. Normally it takes about two weeks for my body to fully adjust after a jump, but for emergency jumps, like this most recent one to keep me alive and prevent a paradox, it just knocks the wind out of me for a bit.

My watch, which synced to a local atomic clock automatically, wound back fifteen minutes or so. Just enough time to make a phone call.

Somewhere just a mile or so away, a phone rang in the Tumbler. I remember when that happened, watching Batman answer the phone and talk to someone that made him give me sideways glances. This time around, I would be on the other end of the line.

"Where did you get this number?" Batman growled on the other end.

"You're going to give it to the Jackie sitting next to you as soon as I hang up. You are also going to give her your burner phone."

"Which one are you talking about?"

"The one you're using. Obviously."

He paused for a moment in confusion and contemplation. "How are there two of you now?"

"Three if you count my corpse. Joker shot me, I went back in time a bit. After you get here, drop her off at the front of the church and meet me in the graveyard."

"Where is 'here'? You're not making any sense."

"Jackie will tell you. Oh! Give her your watch too when you drop her off. Okay, bye!"

I hid the phone in a pocket of my jeans and wiped more of the blood off my face with the sleeve of my jacket. The Joker gave me a slice near my left ear that went to just above my eyebrow. Superficial, but bleeding more than I wanted it too. My hair was already matting in the blood, serving to staunch the flow a bit. If I had any gauze, I wouldn't have used it anyway because I knew worse injuries were coming.

I don't know what it is about being around the Joker, but he seems to have this aura of destruction. Whenever I'm around him, I get hurt. Despite my speech about us already winning, which is true, I knew it wouldn't come without a price at any length.

The Tumbler roared down the street, giving the Joker inside the church a bit of a head's up. Only a minute after the engine cut off, Batman travelled through the shadows in the cemetery to catch up to me. "What's going on?" he asked me in a husky whisper. "What happened to you?"

"I got a look around the building and found Jenny." I shoved my hand into the doorframe of the back door of the church, breaking the wood around it and opening it with little noise.

"How is she?" Batman asked as we tip-toed through the pastor's office behind the chapel.

"Not good, but I can help her." We had a good spot to watch the Joker talking to past-me without being seen. We hadn't quite gotten to the talking part yet, still just sizing each other up.

It's not like Batman had to make the decision, but he voiced it anyway. "Help Jenny. The Joker is mine. It's what he wants."

That's where we parted ways. He crept quietly to find a spot to ambush the Joker from, and I found a tiny spiral staircase up to the choir loft.

We'll come back to Batman in a minute.

I found Jenny unconscious in a place where Joker could keep an eye on her from the ground floor. But with my earlier taunting and getting in his face, his attention left her and gave me an opening to rush up to her and wake her up. Slicing through the ropes around her wrists and taking the gag out of her mouth, I desperately worked to get Jenny to stir. "Jenny, it's Jackie," I whispered. "I'm here to get you out."

There was a bit of a crash downstairs — probably just the Joker trying to strangle past-me. That seemed to get Jenny's attention. As soon as she regained consciousness, her eyes locked on me in an expression mixed with horror and relief. "What are you doing here?"

"Saving your life. Is that okay?"

At that instant, a shot rang out, and I instinctively fell to the ground on my stomach. I heard other crashing noises downstairs, but what held my gaze was an XM-54 mine under Jenny's chair — activated. A trip wire had already been pressed by the chair legs, and another movement would surely detonate the white phosphorus inside, shooting it up at Jenny. I decided not to wonder how the Joker got a hold of a Vietnam War era experimental mine, and just focus on getting Jenny out alive.

"Jenny, do not move." I got to my feet slowly, doing the calculations in my head. Jenny still wore my bulletproof armor, but her head was uncovered, which could get her killed should the mine go off. She could activate the helmet, but that movement could set it off too. I knew that if I got caught in the blast, I might get burnt a bit before the time machine could get me out.

"What is it?" Jenny asked as I started to back up.

"Just a mine. Nothing to worry about."

"A mine?!" she said incredulously to the sound of the Joker smashing into a pew. I hoped it was the Joker, anyway. "You're not doing what I think you're about to do, right?"

"Of course I am." I was now at the other end of the choir loft with a clear path from me to her. "Keep your arms up."

"I told you how I feel about me traveling through time," she said, raising her arms obediently. She looked a tiny bit like a sitting zombie with pigtails.

"Definitely not the same as I do." With that, I took off in a breakneck sprint straight for Jenny. The computer in my brain whizzed through all the necessary calculations, choreographing my every move. I hit Jenny in a diving tackle, wrapping my arms around her waist as tightly as I could.

Once again, everything slowed down. The chair fell backwards as soon as my shoulder hit Jenny's stomach. Jenny instinctively began to wrap her arms around my neck. My face was aimed at the rapidly approaching ground. A white-hot flash of white blinded me. My shoulders burned with my arms getting torn from their sockets as the time machine activated and began to pull me along with the unexpected weight. For a stretched out instant, I wondered if I could hold on tight enough.

* * *

Okay, so let's go back to Batman. I told you it would be a minute. Let us also pretend that I am capable of taking a God's Eye View of the whole thing.

As soon as past-Jackie vanished in between the space of a muzzle flash and the sound of a gunshot, Batman came straight out of the shadows like a jackal pouncing on his prey with a snarl in his teeth. Before the Joker could even process the fact that his victim had disappeared, Batman landed on his back, crushing him to the ground. Fury coursed through his veins as he pummeled the terrorist with armored fists even as the clown tried to rise and defend himself. He ripped weapons away from the clown, getting knives out of his sleeves, tearing apart hidden pockets with daggers and grenades. Not one advantage could be left in the Joker's grasp.

Digging his heels into the ground, Batman bent and hefted the anarchist over his shoulder and straight into the pews. "I don't see what your problem is, Bats," he said with an underlying laugh. A laugh while the Batman panted, catching his breath. The Joker spat out a mouthful of blood and a knocked-out tooth. "Your bitch isn't quite dead. Currently."

"You're going back to Arkham to rot."

Just as he began his assault again, the Joker broke out a hidden store of martial arts expertise, expertly blocking the Dark Knight's jabs and punches. He had a mix of some military-based hand-to-hand combat training and street-fighting tactics. While Batman still held the upper hand, drawing blood from a blow to the Joker's nose and tearing stitches from a sewed-up dog bite, the Joker refused to give up without making it damned difficult for the vigilante. Crippling jabs to pressure points and old wounds, underhanded swings of his fist, and some tricky footwork that tripped up the Dark Knight. He let him know by demonstration that he had practiced with some equally fearsome foes.

The Joker sent a kick out that connected with a bullet wound in Batman's abdomen, and before he could stop it, he was on the ground with the Joker's hands around his throat. "Did you ever bother to ask _why_ I'm doing _any_ of this?"

"No. I already knew why." With a little bit of judo, Batman leveraged the clown off him and regained the upper hand, holding a fist over his head. "You're psychotic. It's almost predictable, really."

He bristled at that word. How he _detested_ that word. _Predictable_. And he might have done something about it too if a white phosphorous mine hadn't detonated just then.

The entire chapel didn't just suffer the effects of a detonation that the both of them were quite familiar with enduring. The phosphorous dropped burning debris that refused to stop. Batman ripped off his cape to keep the phosphorous from going through his armor to his skin. From what he could tell, he'd shielded the Joker well enough that he barely had anything to brush off his coat. But the air was beginning to fill with a white powder, making it impossible to breathe. Impossible to see. Impossible to move...

And then, inexplicably, Batman realized the Joker was dragging him by his arm out the doors of the church where the both of them could breathe.

Coughing and laughter cracked the silence of the street. "That was a bit bigger than I planned on," the Joker said, standing over him.

"What was that?" Batman demanded.

With one foot on his chest — a knived shoe with the blade to his throat at that — he kept the Dark Knight down. "No, that's not the question you should be asking. Obviously it was a mine. I'm kind of a collector. No, the real question is, 'How many people does the Batman have to lose before he stops being the Batman?'"

"Jenny," he gasped.

The Joker mimed a miniature explosion, complete with the requisite " _Poof!_ " sound effect.

Batman twisted the Joker's foot hard, but the man pivoted and slammed his other heel down right on the side of his knee. It was a smooth maneuver, designed to cripple his opponent. And cripple he did. Batman let out a pained yell when he felt the bone crack and shift under the Joker's weight.

"People like you — a guy with 'rules' — think you can just force _everyone_ else to believe in the same rules. And I'm okay with that because I need a protagonist like you to antagonize. But these little _idealists_ that follow you around — I'm not just talking about Tex and her bratty sister — they just make it so easy to tear apart the common good. I knew as soon as I saw your sidekick that a do-gooder like her has no right to think she understands the world as we know it."

Unable to get to his feet, Batman made to grab the clown's ankle. He gave an exasperated sigh and kicked him right in the throat, knocking him back into the grass.

"The truth is, no one _deserves_ to have a happy life. And no one is supposed to. They think they are, but we know they're not. That's why we're here: to make sure happy people are unhappy."

"I am nothing like you!" Batman wheezed. He was going for a snarl, but a crushed trachea does that to a person.

The Joker laughed. "Really. You make sure that mobsters and criminals get what's coming to them, and I simply make life hell for everyone else that isn't expecting it. People like Jim Gordon. Jim Gordon's two kids that look up to him and want to be him. Mrs. Gordon, who supports her husband's crusade like a tireless angel. The rookies who join the academy because you inspired them to bring out the good in the world. It's just such a lie, and now someone needs to show them the _truth_ ," he said with a wicked grin. "Should I start with the kids? Or leave them orphans?"

He didn't know what for sure snapped inside him. Something deep and primal from the darkest nightmares of the recesses of his memory that fueled him with a rage that ignored all pain. He rose onto his one good leg, locked the Joker's neck in a vicious choke hold, and pulled him down to his level. Then he hit and punched with blistering force, driving the Joker's head into the ground. Laughs escaped his Glasgow Grin, but they were quickly cut short as he just kept going.

Laughs became short chuckles. Then grunts. Then choking on blood. Cartilage broke. Bones broke, and not just the ones in his face and clavicle. Wrists, both of them, useless. Teeth cracked. Fingers twisted the wrong way. He just wanted him to feel _real_ excruciating pain for _once_ in his life.

"Batman, stop!" He vaguely heard the words, but like every other emotion besides fury, he pushed it out of his mind. He just had to stop the Joker from hurting anyone else.

A pair of hands caught his left arm, pulling it away from the Joker and putting the Batman's weight onto his left knee. With a primitive-man roar, he launched back at the opposing force, launching it away from him.

"Stop it, please!"

He knew he would have kept going until the Joker's face was nothing but brain matter in the lawn if it hadn't been for the scream. Red lenses lifted off his eyes as he stopped his assault and searched for the source.

Kneeling on the ground with her hands over her nose and mouth, Jenny was bent over crying. Not crying - sobbing. Sobbing and still pleading, "Please stop! This isn't you! Please!"

It took too long for him to come up with the words. "I'm sorry."

The Joker wasn't moving. His chest barely lifted to inflate his lungs.

Jenny still sobbed. But she did not try to run away.

"I thought you were dead."

"Just call the police. Let them pick him up. He's not going to do anything to us anymore."

He placed one hand on her face gently, trying to calm her down. "I don't want to kill him."

Blood leaked from her hands. She had a nosebleed. A serious one judging from the amount of blood coming down her wrist. She noticed. He found some gauze in one of his pockets on his belt, and she used it to stem the flow. "Are you okay?"

"My leg …" Did she mean physically? Or did she mean, "Are you going to hit me again?"

Without hesitation, Jenny got to her feet and planted herself directly under him, lifting him up with his arm over her shoulders. "We need to find a phone."

The sirens that had become the city's omnipresent soundtrack began to scream louder in their direction. "I think the authorities already know. Phosphorus burns bright."

"Then we need to run away."

* * *

It only took me twelve minutes after we landed to catch my breath. Considering I was carrying Jenny, that's pretty darn good.

We landed a couple minutes after the bomb went off. Jenny recovered first and went after Batman after making sure the bleeding on my face stopped. And that I was breathing. That's an important thing to mention. I had difficulty with that for a minute and three seconds.

Then they came back. Batman was limping, putting all of his weight onto Jenny's petite frame. His leg wasn't the only thing that hurt, that much was for sure. But he wouldn't tell me what other injuries he had anyway. Jenny herself had blood coming from her nose that was definitely not there before. They stood over me, wondering just what they should do about the near comatose time traveler at their feet.

"I feel like there's a moral we should take from all this," I said to them, perhaps a bit too loudly as I couldn't hear a darn thing. That mine messed something up in my head.

"The Joker's insane and no one should listen to him," Batman said. (I can lip read.) I found it ironic that he offered me a hand to help me stand up.

"I can go for that."I ignored the help as I could do just fine on my own and Jenny could barely hold him up. Pulling my burnt, bruised, bleeding and deafened body together, I got to my feet. "There's just one more thing we need to do," I said.

* * *

We broke into the morgue. Then we found my body. Jenny's face went blank when I pulled it out of the fridge and turned the white sheet down over her/my face. Batman simply seemed to crumple in grief, but also managed to look completely stoic on the outside.

"What are we doing here?" he asked.

"We're holding a funeral," I replied. "Jenny, candles?"

She handed two white sticks of wax to me, and I placed them on either side of my future body's head. With a couple snaps of my fingers, I lit them, and the room was filled with a warm, soft light. "I should have brought flowers," Jenny said, still staring into my dead eyes.

"It's alright, I don't mind." I took my place on one side of the gurney with Batman and Jenny facing me on the other. "Thank you for coming tonight. I've never done a self-funeral before, so this will be interesting." I took a deep breath before I continued. "The last few years have been interesting. From being hit by a truck and shot in the back to being tortured for several weeks and then shot in the back … again … it's been a wild ride. I've made _several_ good enemies, and very few friends. I'm grateful to have half of those friends with me tonight. Jenny, I know it's been tough for you to not be able to just fix me or bring me back home, but I have never felt closer to you as a sister. I mean, we were exchanging letters across thousands of years! How cool is that?"

"Wait, what? We did?" Her confusion was the first expression I'd seen since we got here.

"Did, will, are; tenses are all in context." I turned to Batman with a smile. "I have no idea what to say to you except that I am so _excited_ to work with you! I promise to be useful, to work hard, to not recite _The Dark Knight_ epic ballad while in your presence, to never try to figure out who you are under that mask because that would just be no fun for anyone involved, and to not to fangirl at you — well, not too much. I didn't fangirl, did I?"

He might have frowned in thought, but Batman's always frowning. "If you come back, you're going to die."

"And if I don't come back," I said, leaning forward menacingly, "the paradox will create an irreparable tear in the fabric of space and time, seemingly small at the moment, but growing ever greater as the decades and centuries pass _until it begins to devour the very earth itself in an attempt to_ _ **fix what I broke**_. Also coincidentally, Jenny's the one that would be tortured instead of me. So, you know." I shrugged. "A sister's gotta do what a sister's gotta do."

"If there's never been a paradox," Jenny interrupted, "how do you know what a paradox will do to the planet?"

"I just … do? Okay, is it appropriate in a self-funeral to ask the congregation to share a few words about the deceased? I ask because I genuinely don't know."

After a few moments of reverence, Jenny was the first to speak. "I'm sorry I hit you in the head with my purse."

Batman followed her up almost instantly. "I'm sorry I wasn't fast enough to save you."

"I'm sorry I exposed your face to the local TV stations."

"I"m sorry that there were times I didn't trust you. Many times."

"I'm sorry I got you kidnapped by a psycho obsessed with Alice in Wonderland."

"I'm sorry I nearly got you drowned by a psycho obsessed with riddles."

I frowned at the both of them. "Y'all are the worst. Friends. Ever."

"Everything in context," Batman reminded me.

True that.

"Oh, while we're in the mood for it," Jenny said, jumping in, "Batman, I'm sorry I hit you in the head with a bat and gave you a concussion."

"Okay, now I need details," I said. But from the sly smile they exchanged with each other, I could tell they both swore to keep their lips sealed.

At this point, I picked up one of the candles. "There is an ancient American poem that is not ancient yet, nor has it been written, that is often used in funerals. It's not very good, but I like it.

" _When a person is born,_  
_A candle is lit._  
_Then the earth regains some warmth._  
_A bright beam shines_  
_Through thankless nights_  
_Cutting through the black._  
_O'er time it wanes, sputters and gasps for breath,_  
_But at no point does the darkness win._  
_For each light that shines_  
_No matter how small_  
_Chases out the dark._  
_Sailors will seek it,_  
_Children will find it,_  
_Travelers will follow it._  
_All wander their way home_  
_By light of the wick and the wax._  
_But no light was meant to burn forever._  
_Wax burns low, wicks burn short.  
__Then there comes the dawn._ "

I licked two fingers and pinched the flame out. For a good long minute, none of us said anything. We just kept our gaze on the solitary remaining candle's light.

"Is it true," Jenny said, interrupting the silence, "that time travelers never die?"

"Of course," I replied. "Because as long as I will exist at some point in the future, I might as well still be alive."

Jenny then frowned at the second candle. "What is the point of this one?"

"Um, this is the less pleasant part." Grabbing a couple nearby bottle of formaldehyde, I dumped their contents over my dead body generously. "I can't exactly leave anachronistic technology behind. Or a body for that matter. Would either of you happen to have any thermite on you by chance?"

Batman pulled a couple of devices from his belt. Instead of giving them to me, however, he gently took my body's hands and placed them on her heart like Snow White. Then he placed a black hockey-puck shaped charge over her hands and another on her mouth. "I take it you're planning on destroying the security camera footage as well."

" _Waaayyy_ ahead of you." I took the lit candle in my hand. "Any final words?"

"What do you expect me to tell Mom and Dad?" Jenny asked. "They don't even know you're dead yet."

"Tell them that Jackie died bravely," Batman said. "She died fighting to make the world a better place to live, and no one should fault her for that."

"The universe will keep on turning," I said, "and all of you will move on. Grief becomes a part of character. One day you'll see that you are happy even when you remember the people in your life who have died, and it will happen far sooner than you think it will."

With that, I touched the sheet with the candle, and the whole gurney became a funeral pyre. We all had to step back from it with how hot it suddenly became. Batman leaned heavily on Jenny due to the poor state of his knee.

I could see they wanted to leave, and I was feeling my time had come as well. "Jenny," I said gently, "the Joker gave you a gun with one bullet." Not a question. Just bringing something we both knew to her mind.

She struggled to pull it from her pocket, but she soon did. "You're asking me to"

"Use it on me. Yes."

"You're asking me to kill you. To send you back to Beirut and DATURA and not knowing when you'll come home."

"But now I know for sure that I do come home, and that's all I wanted."

"You come home and die. You could just stay!" she pleaded more with her eyes than her heart.

"I have white phosphorus seeping into my face and arm, if not still trying to burn through all the layers of my flesh. I need to go back to the future where I can get the medical help I need."

Batman pushed himself off Jenny and found another gurney that could support his weight. "I can do it if you want me to," he volunteered.

"No," she said quickly. "You don't kill people. No one cares if I do or not. Besides, she's _my_ sister." She could barely lift the gun a few inches. "Do I at least get to say goodbye?"

I pulled Jenny into a hug, the gun resting on my back as she returned the gesture. "I miss you so much," I whispered. "Every single day for the last four years, I think about how much I miss my home. I hate that I don't get to stay." Letting go, I stepped back. "But you never know. Maybe I'll get to stop by and see you get married or something."

She nodded, tears brimming in her eyes. She was on the verge of losing all control. "I love you." She raised the gun to my head. "I love you, don't ever forget that."

Once again, I didn't hear the gunshot that killed me.


	52. Epilogue

_Five years later_

"Oracle, we've got trouble." A woman with red hair dressed in a sensible sweater and jeans ran from the upstairs window down to the kitchen on the ground floor. "They've got tanks and they're going door-to-door," she said, grabbing a backpack waiting near the back door.

"You need to get going then." The Oracle, a woman dressed in black leather with a scarf wrapped around her head, replied calmly. "Scrub the other locations and find new ones."

"You're coming with me, aren't you?"

"You know as well as I do that one of us has to be caught. Your father will literally – not figuratively – kill me if I let that be you."

She swung the backpack over her shoulders and flung open the door. "This doesn't feel right to me."

"They won't kill me. They can't afford it if you escape." Despite her companion's tension, Oracle remained relaxed, seated at the table. "If you want to complete the Mission, you have to leave me, Babs."

With a nod and a courteous breath of hesitation, the red-haired woman darted out of the back door, taking to the rooftops with a bit of parkour. She headed away from the coming search party, and out of sight of casual eyes. When she wanted to run and hide, very few would be able to catch up to her.

Once she was out of sight, Oracle picked up her book from off the table and wandered into the living room to continue reading it. She didn't pay much attention to it, seeing as how she'd read it three times before. It did serve as a good cover for covertly brushing past the window to observe two gunmen staking out the street while the main force dealt with a sweep of the neighbor's home. Subtlety: not their strong suit, or at least not the hand they wanted to play today. Heaven knows they tended towards the insidious and pervasive.

The door burst open under the weight of combat boots and mercenary soldiers. Oracle reacted instinctively to the vaguely Arabic men with submachine guns swarming into her home, and ran for the back door, knocking over chairs and a bookcase behind her to block their way. Undeterred, they seemed unable to be stopped by such petty obstacles, keeping right on her heels.

Once outside, she raced through the back lots of the string of houses, jumping over short fences with some practiced grace. Even with the scarf flowing annoyingly behind her, she couldn't let anything slow her down. The men behind her fired a few shots at her direction, hitting her in the back, but even that barely slowed her step.

But this sting had been set specifically for her. A few of the men had been dispatched to head her off. They came in through a narrow pass between the houses and hit her from her left in a violent tackle that left her pinned to the ground face down. After a few moments of struggling, two of the men got her on her knees with her hands on the back of her head, fingers interlocked.

As they worked to handcuff her, their leader approached the group flanked by two other gunmen with scarves covering half their faces as unnecessary backup. A tall, massive man with a decidedly monstrous look to him strode up to the prisoner, his hands resting on the fleece lapels of his leather coat. He looked down at the woman in black over a muzzle-like mask that gave his breathing a somewhat mechanical edge. With hands that she knew could break her neck like a twig if he should so desire, he ripped the scarf off her head.

" _Well... Jenny Harkness. Taking after your late sister, no doubt._ "

"Bane. Unintelligible, as always."

" _Where are the others?_ "

She adopted a slightly exaggerated expression of confusion. "What others? There's only me here."

With a sigh, he abandoned the notion of talking sensibly to the Oracle. " _Take her in for questioning_ ," he ordered his men.

* * *

"Where are the other Sirens?"

Oracle, with her wrists handcuffed to the table, and her scarf hanging haphazardly over her shoulders, examined her questioner. Thin face, perpetually tired eyes, medium build. It must have been his mind that put him second in command to Bane. With two months working in Gotham, she'd had time to do her research.

"I don't know what you're talking about," she answered him, meeting his piercing blue gaze.

From a manila envelope, he produced three 8"x10" photographs. He pushed one forward, one that depicted a black-cowled woman in body armor and a short cape. The photographer caught her in the middle of beating a mugger with a pair of retractable batons. "Word on the street is this one is named Batgirl. Rumor is that her father is Commissioner Gordon. Excuse me, _former_ Commissioner."

She turned the photograph straighter. "Funny place to get red hair."

A second photograph featured a purple haired woman in a trench coat firing a crossbow bolt at a terrorist. "This was taken a few seconds before she murdered one of our peacekeepers. The men have taken to calling her the Huntress."

"She really must not like y'all. What, did you kill her parents?"

Disregarding her statement, he showed her a third picture. This one of a disciplined fighter wearing a blonde wig, leather jacket and fishnets riding a hand-built Harley Davidson. "She calls herself Black Canary. She's been spotted at the edges of the city, possibly trying to smuggle out the weak and injured."

"She looks chilly. Who seriously goes crime-fighting wearing fishnet tights?"

"We know that you are their leader, known as the Oracle."

Tucking a stray bit of hair behind her ear, she leaned forward and pushed the photographs back at her interrogator. "You know what I like about all this? We've got people starving, desperate for medical supplies, getting mugged and robbed on a regular basis, and a freaking 12 megaton _bomb_ in the middle of the city – and you go and get photographs developed. That's a show of misappropriated resources if I ever did see one."

"The Sirens are an unauthorized police force threatening the free will of the people of Gotham," he said, forcefully taking back control of the conversation. "With or without your cooperation, they will be removed."

"Free will?" Oracle spat. "No one feels free until they feel safe. How can you possibly say that you have liberated us when you've released all the dangerous inmates into the streets? I personally don't care that they were unlawfully incarcerated due to the Dent Act. We just wanted them gone so we could feel free to live our lives. The people of Gotham deserve to live the way they want, right? The Sirens, from what I've heard, are just helping them do that."

The interrogator sat back, staring her down and gathering clues from her demeanor. Clearly she knew the vigilantes, but she would not give up any information on them apart from what the League of Shadows already knew. "I know you won't talk just because I ask you to. I also know that your parents are alive and well in upstate New York, at least for now. Give us the information we need and it will remain that way."

The somewhat amused and cocky demeanor the Oracle once displayed melted away to expose a steely anger. Leaning forward, she gave him a half smile and unleashed her own barbs of information. " _Barsad_. You and I both know the League of Shadows doesn't have the manpower or connections to leave Gotham and threaten the only family I have left. Furthermore, the Sirens are more of an annoyance than an actual threat of destabilizing your hold on Gotham. On top of that, _if_ I have taught them anything, they will have sanitized all hideouts, cut off all contacts and established new footholds whenever they know one of their own has been taken captive. So, Barsad, I'm just a burned contact. I can't tell you anything you want to know."

"Then that's truly unfortunate for you." Gathering up the photographs, he stood and knocked on the door, signaling the other guards to let him out.

"I can give you one name, though."

"Yes?"

"There's a girl in Tel Aviv. Her name is Rebekkah. She has an adorable little boy. Looks just. Like. You. Coincidentally, my dad has also found himself mysteriously reassigned to Israel recently," she added with a wink.

Barsad slammed the door after him.

* * *

"Oracle, you are being charged with 48 counts of forcibly keeping the peace, three counts of sedition, one count of secession, 39 counts of attempted emigration, 165 counts of spying, 372 counts of assault and battery – "

"Okay, now you're just making up numbers, Crane," the Oracle said.

" – and one count of promoting vigilantism. How does the guilty plead?" The crazed psychiatrist looked down on her through dark, hooded eyes that held a sense of power. With a fraying suit, he certainly did look like the Scarecrow he saw himself as.

"I don't feel guilty for any of those things. Maybe the spying one a little bit, and I've never actually fought with anyone, so that one's bogus. But I would do it all again." She stood up from her accusatory throne and turned to face the crowds in the 'courtroom' of City Hall. Instead of the rag tag, worn and weary masses from the most impoverished of Gotham's citizens, she was surrounded by a jury of former inmates, murderers, gangsters, thieves and rapists, each shouting their own opinions of her sentencing. Had it not been for the terrorists keeping them in line, they probably would have tried to kill her with shanks and switchblades by now. All for good reason. At one point or another, she had seen to it that they pay for their crimes, whether by being thrown in jail before she left Gotham or sending the Sirens after them when she returned. But as she eyed each of them with a piercing blue gaze, shooting cold into their bones through their dingy winter apparel, they became silent, curious and reverent.

"I take it you would like a few moments to speak to the court," the Scarecrow said from atop his pile of discarded law books. Such a fitting place, sitting atop the law.

"Heathens of Gotham, listen to your Oracle," she announced in a strong voice. "For the past few months, this city has been scourged, chastened and terrorized. These are necessary steps for the purification of a city. I remember the days when it seemed there was no respite for Gotham from people bent on destroying every good thing: Cobblepot, Edward Nygma, the Joker. I remember how we felt like there was no dawn to the darkness we were in.

"But then, there was light. It came from the darkness; someone willing to beat back the scum of Gotham so the goodness could bloom. Every time he bled for us, we felt freed. Every time this city burned, we were purged of filth and pride. Every time we are given the worst day of our lives, we find a way to bring about a better one. And now?

"We are in the midst of the worst this city has ever been through. But this will be Gotham's Millennium. Order is returning to this city. This brief absence of law will not be a haven for you any longer. You know of whom I speak." She turned her gaze to Bane. "The Batman will return. I don't know what you've done to him, but he is coming back to redeem Gotham from its sins. He will rid us of each and _every_ one of your men and personally see to it that you are dragged straight to Hell! I have foreseen it."

" _Enough!_ " Bane shouted. " _Judge, make your ruling._ "

"Oracle, for these and all your sins," the Scarecrow said, "I sentence you to death or exile. What is your pick?"

She broke her gaze away from the masked terrorist, and with a sly smile she said, "Exile please." Then she raised her scarf over her head and walked to the door that awaited her doom.

* * *

The snow crunched under her feet during the long parade from the courtroom to the river. Terrorists and criminals pushed and dragged her the length of the path to the place of exile, monitored carefully by Bane following just behind her. When they reached the ice, they threw her unceremoniously onto the ground.

" _Walk_ ," Bane ordered.

The Oracle got back on her feet, brushing the dust off herself. "How many have you sent here to die?" she asked him.

" _Hundreds_ ," he replied. " _Hundreds of people that you could not save._ "

"Have any made it to the other side?"

" _If they didn't fall through the ice, they did not receive a welcoming from the United States army._ " He gestured to the military positioned on the one surviving bridge of Gotham, guns ready to fire on anyone about to cross the border.

"I see. So bullets here, bullets there, ice and water everywhere. Doesn't look like I've got much of a chance, does it."

Barsad pushed her backwards onto the ice. It creaked with the added pressure underneath her feet. "Walk."

"You know what's nice about little sisters?" she asked, removing the scarf from her head and dropping it to the ground. She then tapped her collar, causing a flurry of metal ribbons with bright red eyes to encase her head. " _Hand-me-downs._ "

Then, with a dramatic bow to Barsad and Bane, she laid down on her stomach and began army crawling over the ice as fast as her little arms could drag her.

* * *

She appeared like a vision in the desert, a woman with short, blonde hair and the lead of a thoroughbred horse in each hand. A colorful scarf had been tied over her hair, its ends drifting off into the barely noticeable breeze. Even in the middle of hell, she wore perfectly applied dark eyeshadow and burgundy lipstick. She looked like a lost movie star from the Golden Age of film with her loose white blouse, tan trousers and black sunglasses.

"I'm looking for a billionaire playboy who spends his evenings hiding in the dark recesses of his basement," she said, calling out to the bedraggled man with emaciated features and an overgrown head of hair. "Have you seen one?"

Bruce trudged up the sandy hill to her, halfway believing his eyes were fooling him. "I'm sorry to disappoint. I, myself, was looking for an arrogant, condescending, genius who should probably just get a job as a PI so she can put her intelligence to work."

After five years of radio silence, when the two were finally standing face to face, neither of them knew what to say for a minute. But Jenny smiled and Bruce breathed a sigh of relief that she was real.

"You ran away," Bruce said, blurting out the first thing he could think of.

"You did too," she said. Not an accusation, just a statement of fact. "I just went farther."

He nodded. "Fair enough."

"There's a private airfield a couple of miles from here. I've hired a jet. I'm glad I found you alive, but we need to start moving. Gotham needs the Batman again. Gotham … it isn't good."

"I thought you had sworn never to step foot in Gotham City ever again."

A brief grimace of painful memories crossed her face, but she quickly recovered. "I knew I was needed. The needs of the many, you know?"

Reminded of why he dug himself out of the pit, he prepared to mount his steed. Like a gentleman, he helped Jenny onto her horse before getting on his. Clicking her tongue, Jenny led the way out of the desert at a reasonable pace.

"Why did you leave in the first place?" Bruce asked as he easily guided his horse to follow hers.

"Bruce, ultimately, we were never going to work out. You're too much like me, and nobody likes being around me. On top of that, you are too much like Jackie."

"You could have at least said something before you left."

Jenny turned back in her saddle to look him in the eye. "You could have said something long before I did."

Guilt washed over him. Days after the impromptu funeral, he hadn't been able to look Tex's sister in the eye. Even though Jackie had said plainly and clearly otherwise, he felt incredible blame for not reaching her in time. "I'm sorry."

"You were grieving. Everyone does so in their own time and in their own way. I wasn't capable of grieving with you, Bruce, so I left." The two of them jostled with the rhythm of the horses and the tangled mess of their own thoughts and emotions. "I should have let you know I was going to be okay."

He nodded, accepting and forgiving her just a little bit more. "But you came back."

"Gotham doesn't let go of people like us, does it."

"Not often," he agreed. To be honest, his relationship with the city wasn't great. He spent years fighting for its honor; when it fought back and killed people that he loved, he gave it the silent treatment for five years. Now when it needed Batman most of all, it guilt-tripped him into coming back for one last rescue. "I have to be perfectly honest with you, Jenny. I'm not sure that the Batman is going to survive the next battle with Bane."

She snorted in laughter. "Of course the Batman is going to survive. Passed down from generation to generation for hundreds and even thousands of years. The names and origins will be forgotten and dissolve into myth and legend, but not the mission. The warrior that fights to redeem others is a powerful, lasting narrative. One that Jackie fell in love with and devoted the extra years of her life to becoming. In a sense, Tex isn't your sidekick; she's your inheritance."

"I wasn't talking so figuratively."

"I wasn't either. (Jackie may have left me a hint or two.) Should you survive your encounter with Bane, I'll have some fake IDs made up with some emergency supplies and cash just outside of Gotham waiting for you. Then you can retire safely. And if you die, I'll make sure your funeral is well attended."

"Thank you." There was a weird stir of a weight being removed from his psyche. Something about having an escape route. And permission to hand off the Batman mantle. The damned thing had aged him in such a short time. But until then, this was him: the Dark Knight who enters the tournament at the last minute to save the honor of the kingdom without thanks or praise.

Bruce dug his heel into the horse's side and trotted past Jenny. "What are we waiting for? Let's go save Gotham."


End file.
